A young woman looks for the true meaning of love and learns the truth of the old saw, "You don't know what you've got until it's gone," in this fourth installment in Eric Rohmer's Comedies and Proverbs series. The story opens with the proverb, "He who has two women loses his soul. He who has two houses loses his mind," and centers on Louise (Pascale Ogier) and her live-in lover, Remi (Tchéky Karyo), a Paris architect and noted tennis player. Their relationship hits an important juncture when Remi decides he wants to get married, while Louise wants to continue living the life of a party girl. Eventually, Louise decides to escape her lover's oppression and become intimate with loneliness, so she moves to Paris where she makes complex plans to have her cake and eat it too. Unfortunately, things don't go exactly as planned as she finds herself the object of an amiable writer's affections.