It tells through flashbacks the story of a vagabond who wanders through the Languedoc-Roussillon wine country one winter, beginning after her body is found.

[2] The film begins with the contorted body of a young woman, Mona, lying in a frost-covered ditch, beneath two twin cypress trees, in the vineyards of a small village in the Gard region.

Mona, once a secretary in Paris, had grown disillusioned with her life and chosen to wander the country instead, hitchhiking, sleeping in a tent, and doing odd jobs for survival.

Her journey leads her to meet other wanderers, a Tunisian vineyard worker, a family of goat farmers, a maid who envies her freedom, and a professor specializing in plane trees.

Significant events are sometimes left unshown, so that the viewer must piece information together to gain a full picture.