Wisconsin farm girl Elizabeth Carlson leaves family and her English teacher lover behind and escapes to New York. There she soon makes a career for herself as a fashion model. During a vernissage she's approached by a mysterious man whose motives are unclear...

In 1955, a year after the birth of the National Liberation Front (FLN), Mahmoud was expelled from Algeria by the colonial authorities who feared his revolutionary speeches. At the age of 27, he arrived in the Algerian slum of Nanterre. Roughly questioned by FLN activists, in disagreement with the Algerian Nationalist Movement (MNA) who wanted to recognize theirs, he was then accepted as the local hairdresser and shoemaker. Subsequently, he became a driver during anti-MNA expeditions. Accepting increasingly dangerous missions, he is imprisoned by the French police and once again undergoes interrogations and special treatment by the police which will definitively undermine his sanity. One day, he no longer recognized his companions, and when joy broke out among the FLN militants, at the announcement of the signing of the Evian Accords, Mahmoud remained alone, frozen in an attitude of refusal, walled in his madness. Algeria has just won its independence.

Marseille. Heaps of flowers and funeral wreaths... "A man who no longer defends his colors is no longer a man."

Staubli is happy. He has just concluded a considerable deal with El Farik, one of his biggest successes as an arms dealer. To sign his final contract, Staubli takes the plane with Loussif, Serge Tournier and his wife Laura. During a stopover, a mechanical incident immobilizes the group for a few days in the Moroccan desert. Then Tom arrives, a pilot who trades with his old plane, the Sphinx. A small business that works well. But among these particular customers, Laura strangely reminds him of the one who left him and because of whom he left everything before...

Ali, an Algerian crane operator, takes with philosophy the bullying suffered by immigrants like him. His existence changes radically the day he wins the lottery.

A man decides to use the classifieds to replace his mistress who left him.

Someone we hear talking - but whom we do not see - speaks of a project which describes the four key moments of love: meeting, physical passion, arguments/separation and making up. This project is to be told through three couples: young, adult and old. We do not know if the project is for a play, a film, a novel or an opera. The author of the project is always accompanied by a kind of servant. Meanwhile, two years earlier, an American civil servant meets with an elderly French couple who had fought in the Resistance during World War II, brokering a deal with a Hollywood director to buy the rights to tell their story. The members of the old couple's family discuss heatedly questions of nation, memory and history.