Twenty years after her debut ball when she was sixteen, recently widowed Christine Marie Bell is sorting through papers and mementos belonging to her late husband. Living in a mansion on an Italian lake, she enjoys a comfortable, affluent life that nonetheless feels unfulfilling. While rummaging through keepsakes, she uncovers her dance card from that memorable night and is swept by a tide of nostalgia, sparking a quiet resolve to discover what happened to each partner who signed it.
Her dance partners, scattered across France, have led lives that run the gamut from tragedy to comedy to the ordinary. One man killed himself over Christine, and his doting mother haunts his room in a constant state of denial. A promising lawyer and poet—someone who once seemed headed for great things—took a darker path, becoming cynical and entrenched in a nightlife world. An older composer chose monastic vows and now devotes himself to teaching music to choirboys. The comparatively steady Eric Pierre Richard-Willm remains a fit, well-adjusted bachelor but has secluded himself on a mountainside, drawn into the town’s ski-rescue efforts. Francois Raimu stands as a petit-bourgeois mayor, about to marry his henpecked maid in a small village, while an adopted son finds himself tangled in petty crime. A former medical student has become world-weary and drug-addicted, involved in illegal abortions in the dockyard district. And Fabien Fernandel, an optimistic card-trick-loving hair-dresser, seems content with his domestic life and a familiar routine in the local dance circuit.
When Fabien invites Christine to the town’s ball, she accepts with the hope of recapturing the magic of that night, yet she is surprised to find that the magical room and its dancers are simply ordinary people in a banal setting. A sixteen-year-old girl speaks of how entrancing the moment feels, and Christine leaves the scene feeling ruefully amused rather than transported.
Christine drifts into a melancholy, reflective mood, remaining non-judgmental even as she is unsettled by the profound effect she had on the lives of these men and the losses of their innocence over time. She remains curious about Gerard, the one former suitor she has not tracked down. A friend reveals that Gerard has been living just across the lake for the last fifteen years. Taking a boat to the opposite shore, Christine encounters a young man who bears a striking resemblance to her memories of Gerard. His father has recently died, and the estate is being sold to someone else. In the film’s final moment, the young man, dressed for a formal ball, addresses Christine as his step-mother, and they leave together, suggesting a new connection born from the past into a quietly hopeful future.
