Face to the firing squad a dictator is awaiting death. As the soldiers shoulder their rifles, the man remembers. He recalls with wicked jubilation his devouring ambition, his complete absence of scruples, his brutal lack of humanity, his taste for manipulation, the cowardice of his entourage, his ambiguous relationships with a woman named Dêmokratia.

A seaside resort in the middle of winter, with its abandoned beach bars and rain-battered alleys, can easily flank the drone. Refugees on the top floor of a building in La Grande Motte, Carole and Richard Lazure have zero morale: swindled by their tax advisor and badly defended by an incompetent lawyer, they lost their business, their house and no longer even enough to buy the essentials. The eruption into their life of a childhood friend of Richard, a talkative talker with questionable dating, could be a game-changer - or make their situation worse.

Sémione is a petty, egotistical, everyman who is transformed by the successive trials he undergoes. It's the rule of vaudeville that sets the wheels in motion: small causes have big effects. An absurd misunderstanding convinces the other characters that Semione is about to commit suicide. Their sudden interest in him makes the prospect alluring. But as he is about to commit suicide, he sinks body and soul into the Hamlétian vertigo of being and nothingness.

A woman accused of murder escapes an asylum and her psychiatrist tries to find her.