This comedy-drama by first-time director and scripter Jean-Luc Trotignant details the exploits of a crass, low-life family. Achille Pinglard (Jean-Luc Bideau) is a factory foreman and his wife Ginette (Michele Brousse) works in a porno theater. Together, they are driving their daughter up the wall. She vents her feelings in her private diary, which her parents often expropriate for their own use. Meanwhile, the son in the family finds himself without a room after his parents rent it out to someone else, and the grandmother is a demented alcoholic invalid.

Sylvia Juszczyk, a Jewish woman in her forties who has been divorced for five years, is a dentist whose long working days are not the only source of happiness. She is in love with a young man who is unemployed because his skills are not adapted to the job market.

The CEO of a recycling company blames lazy staff for declining results. To motivate them, he sends executives to a survival course in the Corsican maquis, hoping to transform them into conquerors. The executives, in suits and ties, find the hostile environment challenging.