Along Came Love

Madeleine has a brief wartime liaison with a German soldier. She is publicly shamed as a 'collabo' while she is still pregnant with his child. The stigma marks the start of the film's complex history for her.

After the war, she works as a waitress at the Beaurivage hotel in Brittany and raises Daniel. She meets François, a Sorbonne archaeology postgraduate, and they quickly fall in love. They marry, beginning a new life together.

Daniel resents that his mother won't discuss his biological father. He acts out at school and is expelled after attacking another pupil. The unresolved past continues to weigh on him.

The family moves to Paris, where François's last male lover tries to gain entry to their flat. François pretends the visitor is merely a college friend who was certified insane after an academic grievance. The confrontation foreshadows the volatile years to come.

The lover burns down the couple's house, destroying their home and François's near-complete thesis. The fire forces them to rebuild and rewrite their work. The loss hardens their resolve.

While writing again, they relocate to run a dance club near an American military base. The new venture pulls Madeleine and François into a different social circle. The club becomes central to their life for a time.

Madeleine receives news that her estranged father has died and travels to his grave to pay respects. On the way, locals cover their car windscreen with excrement, a crude act of hostility. The incident underscores the ongoing social tensions surrounding her past.

At the club, Madeleine and François are both drawn to Black American serviceman Jimmy and shelter him from an American MPs' check for leave passes. They hide him in their bedroom while the base is in town. The situation blurs boundaries of loyalty and desire.

Madeleine awakens Jimmy with a foot massage and they begin to make love; François joins in, kissing Jimmy and Madeleine. When Jimmy tries to have sex with François, he stops and leaves, furious at being treated as a 'plaything' and suspected of being gay. Madeleine confronts François about his bisexuality, but they ultimately reconcile.

With the thesis completed, the couple have their daughter Jeanne and move back to Paris for François to take up an academic post. Madeleine grows bored with their bourgeois life.

François's compulsive cottaging with his under-age student Jean leads to police arrest. Madeleine denies it, but he is taken to the police station and faces a long prison sentence; she hides the arrest from Daniel and Jeanne.

As François returns home on bail, he watches Madeleine set off to school with Daniel and Jeanne, then kills himself by stepping in front of a truck. The tragedy devastates the family and reshapes their future.

At François's funeral, Jeanne vows to read all the books in her father's office, starting with a translation of The Picture of Dorian Gray, while Daniel signs up for five years in the army. The siblings confront the long shadow of their father.

Running a bar and awaiting a cancer operation, Madeleine writes a letter to the Wehrmacht archives admitting Daniel's true paternity and acknowledging she was wrong to conceal it. The letter will allow Daniel to discover whether his biological father was killed on the Eastern Front.