Christine Paolini
The Arbac de Neuvilles are one of the oldest families in France. They have inhabited their ancient château for fifty-two generations and are proud of their noble ancestry. But today they are stone broke. When a bailiff turns up notifying them that they owe two million euros in back taxes, these proud aristocrats are understandably shaken to the core of their ancestral seat. Just how are they to find this amount of money when none of them has any capacity for work?
On the day that his son fails his baccalaureate, Michel loses his job. He has been employed at the same factory for twenty years and now he has no job, no qualifications, no prospects. Michel soon realises that the only way he is going to get another job is by first passing his baccalaureate. So, he goes back to school, with his friend Gérard, who is in the same position. Naturally, Michel’s son is not at all pleased to find himself in the same class as his dad...
A film with emphasis on visuals and music, the plot concerns characters who meet in present time, mainly the male gypsy Jesus, and the female thief and con-artist Odona, who share parallel experiences from lives 2000 years in the past. These stories are juxtaposed.
The lines between love, sex, and politics become hopelessly blurred in this French drama. Jeanne finds herself torn between the two men a French and a North African in a romantic and sexual dilemma that mirrors France's political turmoil regarding the nation's growing Arab population.
In the woods, a 13-year-old boy is grabbed by an escaped convict and told to bring money later that day. The boy does as he's told, only to be attacked by the convict's partner. A murder ensues, and through happenstance, the murderer and the boy's mother form an alliance. All this takes place in four days during which the boy has his first communion, his separated parents face each other amidst grandmother's hopes they'll reunite, the grandfather just wants to go fishing, the school's chaplain complains about the boy's behavior, and the convicts' shared girlfriend comes, gun in hand, to help them escape to Tangier. The mother's surprising decisions complete the story.
