Odette Toulemonde has no objective reason to be happy, but she is. Balthazar Balsan has all it takes to be happy, but he's not. Odette, in her awkward 40s, between her luscious hairdresser son and her teenage daughter stuck in puberty, works by day selling make-up in a department store and by night sewing feathers on costumes for the girls of Parisian cabarets. She dreams of thanking Balthazar Balsan, her favourite writer, for the optimism which she believes emanates from him.