An adaptation of Émile Zola’s 1877 masterpiece L’assommoir, the film is an uncompromising depiction of a lowly laundress’s struggles to deal with an alcoholic husband while running her own business.

After thirteen years in Germany, Fernand is coming back to his wife and his restaurant. But since his disparition, his wife as made her life with a norman chef, sympathetic but a specialist of butter's cooking when Fernand cook only with oil!

Rouen, Normandie, 1431, under hundraårskriget. Efter att ha tillfångatagits av franska soldater från en motståndarfraktion blir Jeanne d'Arc, jungfrun av Orléans, orättvist dömd av en kyrklig domstol som övervakas av hennes engelska fiender.

Normandy, second half of the nineteenth century. Jeanne Dandieu lives in a manor house with her parents and their servant Rosalie. She gets to know Julien, a handsome man, whom she soon marries. Her happiness is short-lived as she finds out that not only has Julien married her for her money but he cheats on her as well, with Rosalie to crown it all.

Raven, a mobster just released from prison, settles the score by murdering Mendetta and her partner, who had turned him in. Having taken over Mendetta's various bars, he finds himself at war with other mobsters who want to kill him.