On the island of Jersey, off the French coast, Mélanie, a beautiful woman gifted with a captivating personality, enjoys having unimportant love affairs that her husband Victor, a perfumer older than her, seems to endure with total indifference.

The small Norman village of Allouville is proud of its thousand-year-old oak tree. But one day, a project of enlargement threatens the tree. The deputy Charles Crétois was keen on this project, which allowed him to continue the speculation he had been indulging in on certain lands. He is supported by the mayor of Allouville to whom he promised the Legion of Honor. But the whole village protests: they want to save the oak tree.

A gifted student, Annie Girardot thought for a while of becoming a nurse, before passing the entrance exam to the Conservatory. She leaves with two first prizes in comedy. In the theater she triumphed in "The Typewriter" by Jean Cocteau. It was Cocteau who made her cut her hair to adopt his famous short cut. The cinema opened its doors and she turned with Pierre Fresnay, then with Jean Gabin, in "Le rouge est mis" by Gilles Grangier. The Comédie-Française then asked her to make a choice. It would be the cinema.

In a supermarket, in the sofa section, director Fabien Romains comes to choose the sofa that will be the main feature of the set for his next play. Priscilla Gabor, his ex-wife, who stars in the play, insists on deciding for herself which sofa she will rest her buttocks on. Edouard Le Tellier, the play's author and producer, and the actress's current husband, pretends to be interested in the debate. Finally, Olivier Leblanc, the salesman, who has always dreamed of acting, sees these visitors as a chance to promote himself.

Sylvie and Marie-Christine, two young girls abducted by force by pimps in order to make them participate in perverse shows, testify against their captors and are subsequently assassinated. Commissioner Beauclair and her teammates vigorously tackle the prostitution network in the Paris region. But the witnesses they meet are eliminated one after another ...

Julien, fifteen-year-old, meets Nathalie, a girl his age whom he falls in love. Soon she is expecting a child. Their parents take the news with reservations. The baby will come and with it, the difficult learning of life.

The engagement of a young couple is spoiled by the antics of their relatives.