A tobacco planter on Réunion island in the Indian Ocean becomes engaged through correspondence to a French woman he does not know. The woman that arrives does not look like the picture he received, but he marries her anyway.

Antoine is now 30, working as a proofreader and getting divorced from his wife. It's the first "no-fault" divorce in France and a media circus erupts, dredging up Antoine's past. Indecisive about his new love with a store clerk, he impulsively takes off with an old flame.

In the early 20th-century, Frenchman Claude meets Englishwoman Ann in Paris. Ann invites him to her family home, intending him for her sister Muriel. Claude falls for Muriel, but families demand year-long separation before approving marriage.

Parisian everyman Antoine Doinel has married his sweetheart Christine Darbon, and the newlyweds have set up a cozy domestic life of selling flowers and giving violin lessons while Antoine fitfully works on his long-gestating novel. As Christine becomes pregnant with the couple's first child, Antoine finds himself enraptured with a young Japanese beauty. The complications change the course of their relationship forever.

In the 19th century a mysterious woman named Adele H. crosses the ocean, from Europe to North America, to relentlessly pursue a handsome officer that denies her satisfaction.

In the carefree days before World War I, introverted Austrian author Jules strikes up a friendship with the exuberant Frenchman Jim and both men fall for the impulsive and beautiful Catherine.

For young Parisian boy Antoine Doinel, life is one difficult situation after another. Surrounded by inconsiderate adults, including his neglectful parents, Antoine spends his days with his best friend, Rene, trying to plan for a better life. When one of their schemes goes awry, Antoine ends up in trouble with the law, leading to even more conflicts with unsympathetic authority figures.

A committed film director struggles to complete his movie while coping with a myriad of crises, personal and professional, among the cast and crew.