It is a free adaptation of the novel Frankie Addams (French title of Carson McCullers's The Member of the Wedding).

Charlotte Castang is a 13-year-old girl of a working class background, living near a nightclub known as the "Roule-Roule", with her widowed father; crass brother, Jacky; and the family maid, Leóne.

A teacher there lets her in, allowing her to skip class as it's the last day of school before the summer holiday.

While viewing antiques, a car stops by and the driver asks for directions to the metalworker, with Clara in the passenger seat.

Back at home, she tells the maid, Leóne about her meeting with Clara and bickers with her brother, Jacky, when he pees in the bushes.

In the morning Jacky goes to say goodbye to Charlotte before leaving for vacation; she asks him to take her with him before rolling back to sleep.

She walks to the back of the house and meets Sam, Clara's concert manager, at the pool.

Clara is jetboating on the lake with others; on return she tells Charlotte to stay for a party tonight before leaving to practice.

Charlotte phones in many times to Sam, though nobody ever picks up or listens to her messages, she tells everyone that she's leaving with Clara in July.

Lulu runs after Charlotte in joy when she finds she's not leaving, though ends up bleeding from the nose and fainting.

In a children's hospital, Charlotte gifts Lulu a perfume she uses and the two hold hands as they look out the balcony and talk.

I wasn't trying to show a terrible drama, just one of those ordinary events which happen to all adolescents and shape us for life.

I'm the proof because I still remember those tiny episodes that ended up affecting me more deeply than I ever realised at the time.

It helped the marketability of the movie because, as Miller says, "Charlotte was in a way already a star because of her parents - people went to see her out of curiosity.