Longtime friends Guarrigue and Sénanques own a successful law practice in Paris. The dreaded businessman Pervillard is one of their clients. One night, Sénanques, who is in an unhappy relationship, meets Sacha. For her sake, he causes a political scandal involving Pervillard and puts himself in danger.
The manager of a contemporary music composer falls in love with the real estate agent with whom he is looking for a house in Paris. But both have been used to living an independent life: they want to marry but at the same time, are afraid of marriage
During a winter storm, Ursus offers shelter to two orphans, Gwynplaine and Déa; some years later, they are still living together. Gwynplaine has become a famous star, but his success threatens his relationships with Déa and Ursus.
Writer Léo Shepherd lives in rural France together with his daughter Virginia, who manages his affairs. One day Virginia gets a call from the Swedish Academy. Léo has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. His estranged son Paul tries desperately to contact him, but is denied every time by his sister. When Léo starts traveling to the ceremony in Stockholm by motor bike, Paul decides to follow him and try to speak to him. Clearly Léo doesn't want to be followed, starts speeding and gets involved in a accident, but isn't badly hurt. The police confuse another motorist for Shepherd and announce his death. Paul, driven by his childhood experiences, decides to kidnap his father.
Conrad Lang, a handyman in a rich family - he has been raised like a brother with Thomas, who has the same age -, accidentally puts fire to the big holiday house he keeps. He returns to the town he grew up in, to the family home, where Philippe, Thomas's son, and Simone are getting married. Conrad's frequent memory loss and behavioural problems rapidly reveal a neurological disease (Alzheimer's is suggested by doctor Cohen when he examens Elvira) which leads Elvira, Thomas's stepmother, to install Conrad in a guesthouse on the property, with the help of a nurse. When Conrad looses more and more his landmarks in present and past, memories of his youth come back to surface. They intrigue Simone, since these memories do not entirely fit together with the official family history...
This complex allegorical tale tells the story of man’s quest for spiritual meaning. When God enters the body of 1980s filmmaker Simon Donnadieu, his wife Rachel realizes that something has gone awry, but chooses to remain faithful to her erratically-behaving husband.
Onoff is a famous writer, now a recluse. The Inspector is suspicious when Onoff is brought into the station one night, disoriented and suffering a kind of amnesia. In an isolated, rural police station, the Inspector tries to establish the events surrounding a killing, to reach a startling resolution.
A self-centered man (Gérard Depardieu) with many diversions occasionally visits his 4-year-old son (Antoine Pialat) and the boy's mother (Géraldine Pailhas).
After breaking into a house he believes is empty, thief Olivier is caught by the owner, Ariane, who turns out to be a dominatrix. Improbably falling for her, Olivier returns periodically, and an impulsive romance blossoms despite Ariane's profession. Soon Olivier becomes more familiar with her work, even joining in on occasion. However, when he discovers that Ariane has a son, he attempts to "fix" her, hoping to give her a better life.
In this most talky and personal of films, director Marguerite Duras and actor Gerard Depardieu do an on-camera read-through of a movie script. Occasionally, the director comments about the characters or their motivations, and sometimes the actor does. That's all -- there is no action, there are no location shots, no one pretends to be anything else. The script itself tells about an encounter between a blank-slate of a woman hitchhiker, and a communist truck driver. As the reading progresses, Duras comments bitterly about the failed ideals of communism and the glorious revolution that will probably never happen.