A thirteen-year-old French girl deals with moving to a new city and school in Paris, while at the same time her parents are getting a divorce.

Thierry drops out of school to apprentice as a lion tamer at the zoo where he meets Roselyne, who shares his passion. They fall in love and when he loses his job, the young lovers journey across France finding odd jobs at several circuses. In Germany, they fall under the tutelage of ageing big cat trainer, Klint, and while they are closer to realising their dreams, they find that their success drivers them part.

Michel, a psycho-analyst, falls asleep while listening to his patient Olga, a kleptomaniac and a sexual pervert, tell him how she likes her husband beating her. When he wakes up, he finds Olga having been choked to death. He now has to deal with a body, with Olga's rich husband who thinks she stole money from him, and with all his patients' insanity that haunts him.