Synopsis
Marcelline is an actress. Forty, single and childless, she begins rehearsals for Turgenev’s A Month in the Country. Denis, the director, admires her greatly and promises he'll make her happy on stage – she will shine. But things don't go to plan.
Denis introduces Marcelline to his assistant, Nathalie. The two women were at drama school together twenty years earlier. Nathalie tells her she had to give up acting: she has a husband and children. Marcelline and Nathalie look at each other as if in a mirror, each seeing in the other the life she doesn't have, the dreams she cannot bear to abandon. Their meeting is the first in a series of tremors that will turn Marcelline's life upside down.
Her gynecologist informs her that if she wants a child, it's now or never. The character of Natalya Petrovna begins to invade her. Her relationship with Denis grows tense, and trust disintegrates. Marcelline loses her ability to function.
Ghosts appear, offering help: her long-dead father; Julien, an old flame who died of an overdose fifteen years ago. Ghosts… and women. There’s her mother - young at heart, ready for love, pained by her daughter's loneliness - who criticizes Marcelline for holding out for the ideal man, for demanding perfection. Julien's mother, living alone with her dog and her memories; Juliette, a young actress who idolizes Marcelline; Natalya Petrovna. And last but not least, the Virgin Mary...
Women - twenty, forty, sixty, seventy years old. All longing to live the adventures, the passions, the part of themselves they have not yet experienced. All unwilling to abandon their dreams.