Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre. When her lovestruck friend Henri mentions a secretive high-class brothel run by Madame Anais, Séverine begins to work there during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients grows possessive, she must try to go back to her normal life.

An American scientist is sent by the CIA to East Germany to retrieve a secret microfilm from a Soviet scientist interested in defecting to the West but the Stasi secret police's surveillance complicates matters.

Christophe Maquet will receive the Legion of Honor. But he learns that his father, seriously ill and extremely diminished, with whom he has been angry for years, has decided to organize "his departure" on the very day of his ceremony. Shocked by the news but suspecting his father of knowingly stealing his day of glory, Christophe decides to spend 3 days with him to attempt a final reconciliation.

Posthumous tribute paid by actor Luc Bernard to his older brother, director Guy Gilles ( 1938 - 1996 ). Documentary composed of interviews with some of his brother's friends and some actors from his main films, excerpts of which we see.

Two beautiful and different girls, Alice and Lisette are 17 years old, when forcibly removed from their Alsatian family to cooperate in the war effort in Germany. After spending six months in a indoctrination camp, they are both sent to a munitions factory where they are tasked to perform inhuman works. An explosion erupts, they are suspected of sabotage and threatened with being sent to a boot camp. Alice and Lisette believe they saved when transferred to a maternity where they continue living the hell of war.

A superficial woman finds conflict choosing between her abusive husband and her vain lover.

Ariane and Gerhard Christ, a wealthy Munich couple, plan for the weekend on separate trips, lying to the other about their trysts. However, their itineraries are complicated when they both arrive at the family's country home with their respective lovers.

Rémi is a man trapped in a deteriorating marriage. When his wife is unexpectedly killed in a car accident, Rémi is left with his stepdaughter, Marion, who chooses to stay with him rather than live with her birth father. After the initial shock passes, Rémi is caught off-guard when Marion begins expressing her attraction to him. Initially repulsed, Marion's mature beauty wears him down as he finally caves to her seductions.

A widow in her fifties,Madame Lacoste ,meets Jean when they both come to put their pussy in a cattery.The man borrows a hefty sum from her ,to send his sick young son to breathe the fresh air of the country ,or so he said;in fact there's no son at all.He gives the money to his mistress who claims she's pregnant by him and who wants to have an abortion.She lies too ,for she does not expect any child and she intends to help the young man she's in love with to buy a scooter.But the latter does not care about her either and intends to marry a "rich " girl ....who's actually the concierge's daughter.

The film follows four families, with different nationalities (French, German, Russian and American) but with the same passion for music, from the 1930s to the 1960s. The various story lines cross each other time and again in different places and times, with their own theme scores that evolve as time passes. The main event in the film is the Second World War, which throws the stories of the four musical families together and mixes their fates. Although all characters are fictional, many of them are loosely based on historical musical icons (Édith Piaf, Josephine Baker, Herbert von Karajan, Glenn Miller, Rudolf Nureyev, etc.) The Boléro dance sequence at the end brings all the threads together.