Born out of wedlock early in the last century, Violette Leduc meets Simone de Beauvoir in postwar Saint-Germain-des-Près. An intense lifelong relationship develops between the two women authors, based on Violette’s quest for freedom through writing and on Simone’s conviction that she holds in her hands the destiny of an extraordinary writer.

Tridan Lagache has spent his whole life at Club Med, changing friends every 8 days. At 50, he resigns from the vacation spot where he was born, determined to track down his great mini-club childhood love, Violette.
He shows up in Paris, naïve and lost but glad to be lodged by Louis, a half-brother he never knew he had. In order to be rid of the cumbersome Tridan, Louis passes one of his fling off as Violette, and Tridan, all emotional, thinks he recognizes her at first glance.

In 1852, the mountain village in Provence where Violette lives is brutally deprived of all its men after the repression of the republicans ordered by Napoleon III. Women spend months in total isolation, desperate to see their men again. In this situation, they make an oath in case a man arrives in the village.

Forty-year-old Paul-André is a timid, rather introverted man. Rich but alone, he is deeply bored and ends up concluding that what he needs is a family. Violette, a forty-year-old full of energy, is threatened with eviction and is afraid she’ll lose custody of her two children. Paul-André then proposes a totally above the board contract to rent the family in exchange for him paying off Violette’s debts. For better and for worse..

On holiday in the south of France, chic Parisian sophisticate Violette meets life-loving IT geek Jean-René. Against all odds, there’s a real chemistry between them and at the end of the summer, Jean-René wastes no time in joining his beloved in Paris. But there’s trouble in paradise, and a third party swiftly appears to shatter the couple’s idyll: Lolo, Violette’s ultra-possessive 19-year-old son, who is determined to get rid of his mother’s lover, whatever it takes…