Abel, who lives in Quebec, goes to France in search of ancestors, friends and lovers. He travels from Paris to Marseilles, seeking to establish the roots of his own French-Canadian culture. He wanders through museums and art galleries, remarking that it is all like a vast picture post-card, but he doesn't know to whom to sent it.

He meets a young widow, her brother and small son. It looks as though something may come of the relationship, but her mother dies, and Abel decides to move on. He takes up with a woman magistrate, who is having her own problems with her husband, but this relationship doesn't last either.

What happens to Abel, though, is only part of the film's concern which is to look at the art and literature of 'the old country' through the eyes of a French-Canadian.