It is only a few years into the future, but the face of France has changed drastically, due to its takeover by a moralistic, hypocritical and totalitarian regime. Women with children who want to divorce their husbands are not allowed to do so, all political parties have been outlawed, smoking is illegal and everyone must work. After a spat with her boyfriend, Carole (Laure Marsac) hails a taxi, not realizing that she has done so without any of the money or identification papers she needs. Her driver (Bruno Cremer) attempts to help her, but a variety of mishaps bring her to the attention of the police, who proceed to arrest her on made-up charges and a phoney HIV-positive result on tests given at the time of arrest.

Drawing some intriguing parallels between the work of the prostitute and that of the psychiatrist-both have clients, both charge for sessions, both take on roles that serve the needs, psychological or otherwise, of those they serve, Jeanne Labrune's drama stars Isabelle Huppert and Bouli Lanners as, respectively, Alice, a disaffected call girl and Xavier, a shrink with a crumbling domestic situation.

In the middle of the night, someone brings Ivan's body home to his wife and his young son. Flashbacks reveal the relationships among Ivan and his brother Alex, a cop with a cleanliness fetish; siblings Juliette and Jimmy, Ivan's partners in a seedy nightclub; the love triangle of Alex, Juliette, and Marie, a professor of philosophy; and of Alex and his nephew, Ivan's dour, stoic son. Ivan's death changes every relationship.

Horty, a French foundry worker, wins a contest and is sent to see the sailing of the Titanic. In England, Marie, saying she is a chambermaid on the Titanic and cannot get a room, asks to share his room. They do, chastely; when he awakens, she is gone, but he sees her at the sailing and gets a photo of her. When he returns home, he suspects that his wife Zoe has been sleeping with Simeon, the foundry owner. Horty goes to the bar, where his friends get him drunk and he starts telling an erotic fantasy of what happened with him and Marie, drawing a larger audience each night.

En París, Lulu, un policía apasionado, trabaja con la fe de un novato, a pesar de la burocracia esclerótica, la incompetencia o la negligencia de algunos de sus colegas. En su nueva posición como inspector de narcóticos, trata de mantener su cordura mientras es testigo de lo peor de la condición humana.