Harold Chasen is a young man of 19 years with an overflowing and morbid imagination, who takes advantage of his free time to attend funerals, and stage suicides to react to his mother, Mrs. Chasen, a strict, tyrannical woman and a a bit hysterical, who takes care of finding a wife for his son. But when Harold meets Maude, "80 year old princess", nonconformist and full of life, everything changes for the young man. The old woman teaches him to love life through more wacky experiences than each other, and Harold falls in love with it.

In 1971, a young woman moves from the French countryside to Paris and begins a passionate love affair with a feminist leader.