A bored young man meets with his former girlfriend, now a cabaret dancer and single mother, and soon finds himself falling back in love with her.

Jacquot Demy is a little boy at the end of the thirties. His father owns a garage and his mother is a hairdresser. The whole family lives happily and likes to sing and to go to the movies. Jacquot is fascinated by every kind of show (theatre, cinema, puppets). He buys a camera to shoot his first amateur film... An evocation of French cineast Jacques Demy's childhood and vocation for the cinema and the musicals.

Brassac is a drunken veterinarian who can't resist bringing home stray animals and humans. Lilli Palmer plays his long-suffering wife Marie. When he brings home the prostitute Simone, Brassac is not sure he is acting out of concern or lust. He beats up the pimp who comes looking for Simone, and Brassac is happy when she later falls in love with his neighbor, and they make Brassac a "grandfather."