A family in route to New Guinea is shipwrecked on a deserted tropical island. They are forced to remain on the island because of the damage to the ship and the pirates that are roaming the islands.
A month's vacation with the family can mean a lot, which is what Lily realizes when she returns home after several years living abroad. Her mother, a character with an exceptional simplicity, forces her to visit their relatives, giving her a family tour through the abandoned landscape of her childhood making her explore her own frustrations, limitations and faults we all inherit.
French stage actor Louis Ducreux makes his film debut as a 76-year-old traditionalist painter, Monsieur Ladmiral, in this bittersweet portrait of a brooding artist. A widower, Ladmiral lives on an estate in the countryside near Paris with only his housekeeper, Mercedes (Monique Chaumette), and his paintings to keep him company. The action of the film takes place on a bright autumn Sunday in the early 1900s when Ladmiral's son, Gonzague (Michel Aumont), and Gonzague's wife, Marie-Therese (Genevieve Mnich), come out from Paris with their three children to visit the old man. While making small talk with Gonzague, Ladmiral hints ever so subtly that his son has become too bourgeois, too conformist, too accepting of the status quo. Apparently, Ladmiral doesn't want his son to face what he is facing: self-recrimination for failing to take risks, failing to go beyond the bounds of tradition.
A family decides to buy a lodge in a remote hiking area. Their first customer commits suicide and the distraught family buries his body to avoid the bad publicity. But their luck gets worse, the bodies start piling up, and the family becomes frantic to rectify the situation.