Max (Vincent Cassel) is a former bohemian and an amateur writer who gets a job in New York and leaves his girlfriend Lisa (Monica Bellucci), with whom he was madly in love, in mysterious circumstances.

By chance, he catches a glimpse of his lost love, Lisa, in a café, but fails to make contact with her before she storms out.

During the film, flashbacks are intertwined with the narrative to provide a background for Max, Lisa, and especially for Alice, shedding light on the situation.

Upon her return, Lisa is heartbroken that Max has left her and leaves on a cruise (a gift from Alice) to ease her mind, where she meets a rich, married older man named Daniel.

The film begins and ends in "reality" where Max and Muriel lead a futile, vacuous but bourgeois life in high finance (and the implication being that Muriel is the boss's daughter, thus imitating Egeus' involvement in Hermia's marriage to Demetrius in Midsummer Night's Dream), but almost all the action takes place in a dreamlike trance where the lovers don't really know whom they love.

Alice leaves her life behind and flies to Rome, bidding Max one last farewell glance as he embraces Muriel at the airport.