Plot Summary

Antoine and Christine Doinel are still in the honeymoon phase of their young marriage, there a playfulness in their interactions with each other as they live a somewhat bohemian life, he working for a florist in their neighborhood with his main job, which he carries out in their apartment building's courtyard, dying white flowers vivid colors, she a concert violinist and violin teacher. They also have cordial relations with idiosyncratic neighbors and other neighborhood regulars. Their union is not outwardly obvious in the differences in their background, Antoine who uses writing as a means to deal emotionally with what was his neglected childhood in a broken home, while Christine's family is bourgeois. When Christine becomes pregnant, Antoine goes on a search for a higher paying and more stable job, he, in part out of a misunderstanding, able to get one working for an American hydraulics company. It is through that job that Antoine meets and begins an affair with Kyoko, the daughter of a Japanese client. The affair may jeopardize the life he has with Christine - while it is arguably more a fling for Antoine in dealing with these changes, it is love for Kyoko.—Huggo