To lift the spirits of her friend Mélanie, Lou brings her on a camping trip to a lone fortress on the sea. As Lou hides her little romantic secrets, Mélanie lingers in her ruminations. One morning, a solitary and enigmatic figure appears and draws Melanie into a fantastical encounter.

While on vacation in Bordeaux, four-year-old Lili and her brothers, aged nine and twenty, are left to fend for themselves when their flamboyant mother goes home to her restaurant-disco business in Gabon without them. Torn between the desire to return to her lost paradise and the duty to seize the chance to make her mother proud, Lili grows up developing strategies to survive, find success, and return to the bright lights of her native Africa.