In the middle of the Algerian war, Elise, from Bordeaux, “goes” to Paris to join her brother to earn her living in an automobile factory. There she meets Arezki, an Algerian nationalist activist with whom she falls in love. A chronicle of working life at the time and which highlights the extent of police repression against Algerians.

Céline is a free-spirited woman is married to a dull, middle manager Philippe. Her husband's co-worker pegged her as a household ornament because of the union. She befriends a woman who shows her how to juggle the couple's living expenses to get what she wants. As she asserts her independence and gradually frees herself from her husband's claustrophobic world, she turns to painting and writing about the inequity between genders.

Treated as an outcast and exploited by the villagers of a small town, a young woman liberates herself through sex, which she uses as a tool of economic gain and an instrument of revenge against those who have wronged her.