Jean (Bedos) is a romantic revolutionary, yet enjoys the spoils of a bourgeois lifestyle with his wife, Annie (Chaplin). Annie is a retired psychologist, who complains about not being able to see enough of her children and assorted grandchildren. Albert (Richard) is showing increasing signs of dementia; his energetic American wife Jeanne (Fonda) is a former university lecturer who is suffering from cancer but who assures her husband that she is cured, yet shops for a brightly-colored coffin.