- In sepia tones, the film moves back and forth among three periods in Robert Tucker's life he's an old man, near death, in a nursing home at Christmas time; he's in middle age caring for his cheerful but dying mother; he's a lad at Catholic school, practicing his catechism, going to confession for the first time, receiv…
- Claudie, a young French woman, inherits her uncle's property in Algeria, much to the disappointment of her scheming cousins Diane and Manuel. On the ferry she meets and falls for Pierre, an idle young man who has squandered his inheritance and is on his way to beg from Christian, his rich but rough-and-ready uncle, who…