In a French nightclub, choreographed song and dance routines are performed, rather than a streamlined narrative. They tell the story of Parisian culture and politics from the 1920s—1980s. A disparate, anachronistic series of characters, including an ordinary waiter, a Nazi collaborator, resistance fighters, and 1960s student protestors gather to celebrate and satirize 20th century France's icons, demons, and social changes.

This comedy brings Pierre Richard and Michel Piccoli together onscreen once again. In the story, former professor Henri Toussaint Piccoli has been locked away in a psychiatric ward for some years for trying to strangle his wife when he found her in bed with another man. Now she has a terminal illness, and wants some sort of reconciliation with him. His therapist (Richard) decides to permit him to visit with her, provided he comes along. Except for his wide mood swings and occasional outbursts of lewd muttering, the professor "passes" for sane fairly easily. Not so the psychotic (Dominique Pinon) who stows away in the psychiatrist's car, who constantly calls attention to the other two.

Pierre Cohen, a sophisticated Parisian psychologist, goes to his brother's farm in order to protect it from very hostile local landowners.