A young disabled man realizes his dream of being an actor. But blinded by the artificial light of success, he loses his inner light, until he tries to find it in real life. An avant-garde high school puts the spotlight on the forgotten people who are disturbing, abnormal, handicapped, old, fragile, different, who are said to be maladjusted. And yet they are much more likely to be happy.

Born out of wedlock early in the last century, Violette Leduc meets Simone de Beauvoir in postwar Saint-Germain-des-Près. An intense lifelong relationship develops between the two women authors, based on Violette's quest for freedom through writing and on Simone's conviction that she holds in her hands the destiny of an extraordinary writer.

A succulent account of the life of French chef Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935) who made the simple act of cooking food a true art by creating the modern concept of haute cuisine, and who also became the main reference point for many generations of future chefs.

The prodigious genesis of a monument of world literature, too often reduced to its popular success, also recounts the tormented conversion of its author, Victor Hugo, to the ideal of social progress.