[2] This story follows a group of Anglophones who come to a remote town in northern Quebec, in order to learn French.

[4] The film centres on several anglophones, mostly Canadians but including one American, who travel to the small village of Saint-Isidore-du-Cœur-de-Jésus in the Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec for an intensive French immersion course.

The language students include Bobby "JFGay" Sexton (Gavin Crawford), a federal Member of Parliament who aspires to become leader of his political party but is avoiding a debate against rival candidate Michael Pontifikator (Colm Feore) because of his poor French skills; Cathy (Martha Burns), his Royal Canadian Mounted Police bodyguard; Aretha Marley (Oluniké Adeliyi), a flight attendant who has taken the immersion course twice before but still cannot speak French, having learned only how to put on a French accent while speaking English; Colin MacGonagle (Fred Ewanuick), a divorced postal worker from Alberta who enters a romance with French teacher Julie Tremblay (Karine Vanasse); and Jonathan Hornstein (Jacob Tierney), a trainee chef from New York City who wants to open a French restaurant.

[1] In Saint-Isidore, nearly all of the 2,000 residents have the surname Tremblay—the sole exceptions are Pierre-Émile Dagnais (Yves Jacques), the strictest and most disciplinarian teacher at the French immersion school, and Kumar (Ali Hassan), a chef from Mumbai who moved to the town because he'd been told the region was where all of Quebec's Indians were.

The town's most powerful residents are Sylvie Tremblay (Pascale Bussières), the head of the French immersion school, and her father (Robert Charlebois), a corrupt Senator.