On her way to visit her childhood home in a colonial outpost in Northern Cameroon, a young French woman recalls her childhood, her memories concentrating on her family's houseboy.

Paule is pushing 50, as she repeatedly observes in her voice-over commentary. When she – a philosophy lecturer with a 10-year marriage and a 15-year-old daughter – learns that her husband is having an affair with a 28-year-old, this number takes on a special weight. The Internet site “L’âme-sœur” is supposed to help Paule get through her burgeoning midlife crisis...

1952, Paris. Nadia, a Red Diaper baby, has a sister, Polish parents, and at 15 is an active Communist. When cops beat her during an anti-American demonstration, she's rescued by a "Match" photographer. As the friendship becomes a love affair and her slogans are tested by new knowledge and emotion, some of the Red youth want to expel her. When she goes with Stéphane to a seaside photo shoot, her father goes to the police. Stéphane faces charges, so leaving to cover the war in Indochina looks appealing. In a parallel story, Nadia's mother meets again her prewar lover, released from Siberia, who challenges the French Reds with very real scars and word of Stalin's anti-Semitism.

A subsidiary of Générale Financière d'Investissement (GFI), Medic-Hall, a medical equipment company, employs nine salespeople. As part of the restructuring of the group, management decided to separate from them, without paying them severance pay. For this, the company called on Sébastien Jalabier, a degreasing specialist, who undertakes to make them resign by resorting to various means of pressure: tracking down professional misconduct, humiliation, bullying, thankless tasks ...

Paris, Kingdom of France, August 18, 1572. To avoid the outbreak of a religious war, the Catholic princess Marguerite de Valois, sister of the feeble King Charles IX, marries the Huguenot King Henry III of Navarre.