In a palace on the Côte d'Azur, a whole fauna evolves: a colonel who cheats on his wife, the colonel's daughter who flirts with Fred, Fred's friend, Emmanuel, who is in love with Marion, and Marion who kills himself. believing that Emmanuel does not forgive him for having, out of idleness, yielded to Fred one day.

Also known as Lilac, this early Anatole Litvak-directed talkie was based on a play by Tristan Bernard and Charles Henry Hirsch. The story bears traces of the Bertold Brecht-Weill piece The Threepenny Opera, with heroine Lilac (Marcelle Romeo) consorting with the criminal scum of Paris. Lilac falls in love with a handsome detective (Andre Luguet), but he doesn't let his emotions stand in the way of his duty, and in the end he reluctantly turns her over to the authorities. At $120,000, Coeur de Lilas was one of the most expensive movies to come out of France in 1931, but it more than made back its cost at the box-office.

Bored with her life with her husband the lighthouse keeper, Hélène sleeps with two other men who fight for her.