Caroline, a freelance scriptwriter in Paris, is called to the hospital where her father Tony, a retired businessman, has undergone surgery.

She stays with her mother Miche in their home on the south coast and helps her when he comes back to convalesce.

Miche is a woman of limited and conventional mind, whose only outside interests are bridge and her Catholic church.

Tony has no outside interests, being a shallow and selfish man, but his asset is charm, which has seen him through his life and now serves to conceal both his constant physical pain and his fear of imminent death.

In Tony's last weeks, Caroline begins to learn a lot about the father she hardly ever saw and to form a bond with him, strengthened by secret outings to bars for the alcohol he is forbidden.