Nicole Duret

Alice, having trouble with her self image, tries to hide her weight and eating disorder from her school and parents.

After graduating from high school where she was a boarder, Reine Ducasse decides to settle down with her rich father Louis in his luxurious apartment. She has just begun her studies in history and has a good friend, Frédéric, a medical student who wouldn't mind being more than just that. Around her, strange fellows attract her attention. Who is Philippe, allegedly Louis's stockbroker? And what about Marguerite who presents herself as her father's former secretary? Even more puzzling is the video cassette she finds in her father's place, showing young motorbikers distributing bundles of banknotes. Some time later, Charles, one of the bikers appearing on the video, rings the doorbell: he is wounded.

The film records a day in a supermarket in the Brussels region. The story of this day's little events, both comic and touching, provides the general framework of the film. The situations which are conveyed through an accumulation of quick, light touches, highlight some of the ways we behave in connection with food, the repetitive element in our gestures and movements in this everyday, enclosed world which is so familiar. The film is based on the observation of a supermarket and the people who shop or work there. More and more of their various personalities emerge in the course of the day. They all have their importance: we get to know them from the outside, like people in a group photo where each has his own place. All these individuals cross each other's paths, meet each other, bump into each other again and fill in the framework of the film with a many-sided tableau.

Two young men have left their obscure Balkan country to earn some money as "guest workers" in western Europe. On their way back home, they attempt to change trains in Paris but encounter surprising difficulties from the ticket authorities there. It seems that political changes have rendered their homeland nonexistent, and their passports are no good. Before long, they are stranded in Paris without passports, without a country, and soon even their luggage is stolen. Their fumbling efforts to straighten out the mess result in the French press getting into the act, labeling them as Russian spies. The Parisian expatriate community takes them into its bosom, and romance blooms between one of the lads and a Spanish hatmaker, before they finally achieve a (highly improbable) solution for their difficulties.

Jack and Julie live in a bare Parisian flat. By day, they make love; by night, Jack is a taxi driver while Julie wanders the city. One day, Julie meets Joseph, the daytime cabbie, and soon Julie spends her nights with Joseph and her days with Jack.