Judith Ralitzer, femme fatale, successful novelist is interrogated in the police station about the disappearance of her ghost-writer. A serial-killer escapes from a prison in Paris. A missing school teacher leaves his wife and children. On the road, the annoying and stressed hairdresser Hughette is left in a gas station by her fiancé Paul while driving to the poor farm of her family in the country. A mysterious man offers a ride to her and she invites him to assume the identity of Paul during 24 hours to not disappoint her mother. Who might be the unknown man and what is real and what is fiction?
 

Selima (Sabrina Ben Abdallah) is an independent young nurse of Moroccan Arab origin in the south of France who gets a job doing care for a Moroccan-born Jewish woman, Esther (Ariane Jacquot), who's newly wheelchair-bound. Esther's complaints and abuse lead her housekeeper to quit, and Selima brings in her devoutly Muslim mom Halima (Zohra Mouffok) to clean and do kosher cooking. Problems ensue, but the "two ladies," both of considerable dignity, elegance and girth, find their commonality of generation, religiosity, and national origin overrides politics and prejudice. Halima and Esther hit it off and have many a giggle together.

Complications arise when Esther's doctor son, who usually looks after her, must leave town for a month for training and she agrees to spend the time in Halima's house. At first she kvetches, but before long she and Halima are having more fun together than ever. But mean gossipers in the neighborhood say Halima's earnings from the Jewish lady are tainted money and her plan to use them to make the Haj is "haraam," unlawful. She asks the imam after a mosque service (and this is a rare close-up of Muslim worship) and he gives the correct reply: the Koran says Muslims and Jews are both "ahl ul-kitaab”, People of the Book, they have had lawful dealings with each other since the Prophet's time, and if her employer has never objected to her religion or spoken ill of it, "you have been misled." There is nothing wrong in working for her, her money is "halaal," licit, for the pilgrimage. "Go in peace." When Esther's son comes back early, she refuses to go home and insists on staying to see off Halima on her departure for Mecca. The celebration of the Haj is shown.

Paris bursts into a cacophony on 5 September 1661: The young Louis XIV becomes the sole ruler.

The film follows the confrontation between Jean de La Fontaine, writer of the world renowned Fables, and Colbert, financial administrator for Louis XIV’s Kingdom of France. In 1661, Colbert gets his rival Fouquet arrested, a powerful advisor of the young king. While all the other artists support the decision and rush to the Court, poet de La Fontaine confirms his support for Fouquet. Colbert vows to make the rebel admit the truth, but de La Fontaine, even when penniless, stands by his convictions. Without money, he resists, observes and writes the Fables, which protest against a despotic government in the height of its decline.

The battle between de La Fontaine and Colbert is one which lasted till death.