 Pugnacious Jeannette lives in a convivial working class house in Marseilles, where she raises her two children with the meagre pay from her precarious job in a supermarket. When she attempts to steal two buckets of paint from a derelict cement works, she is caught red-handed by Marius, the limp guard who lives there. A relationship between Marius and Jeannette develops, but they are both hesitant to become emotionally committed. The unavoidable involvement of Jeannette s talkative, sometimes quarrelling, mostly cheerful neighbours, brings additional - sometimes decisive - twists to her relationship with Marius, and with her children as well.