Set in a present day Paris caught between violent unrest and its well-known, inescapable glories. Seventy-four-year old Jules Lacour - a maitre at Paris Sorbonne, cellist, widower, veteran of the war in Algeria, and child of the Holocaust must find a balance between his strong obligations to the past and the attractions and beauties of life and love in the present. In the midst of what should be an effulgent time of life - days bright with music, family, rowing on the Seine. Jules is confronted headlong and all at once by a series of challenges to his principles, livelihood, and home, forcing him to grapple with his complex past.