Plot

Aspiring actress Louise Mauban attends the prestigious Paris School of Drama during the day and works at a dreary factory assembling gas meters at night. She daydreams and acts her way through life, and her fellow students at school begin to suspect her stories are just that - fabrications. After Louise begins to weave a meeting with a debonair playboy into a fantasy of club dates and romance, her co-student Nana discovers the lie when she too meets the playboy. Nana sets a trap for Louise, and the result is an end to one fantasy and the realization of another.—Ron Kerrigan

Among the students at L'École Nationale des Arts Dramatiques (The National School of Dramatic Arts) in Paris, Fleury has gotten a job in the chorus of a musical revue starring Gina Bertier, who handpicked him from among the chorus to have a prominent featured moment as "her kiss" at the end of a number. The revue is being financed by André, the wealthy Marquis D'Abbencourt who happens to be dating Gina. Fleury is casually dating a classmate, Nana, who can't admit that she is jealous of Gina in truly being in love with Fleury. Nana, in turn, will accept other options in her life to save face. Meanwhile, Louise is largely regarded as the most talented actor among the student body, but her standoffish behavior doesn't sit well with many of her classmates, including Nana. Also not in Louise's camp is Thérèse Charlot, one of the school's professors and a renowned actress in her own right, who is threatened by true young talent in not accepting being too old to play the lead ingénue roles. What none of them know is that Louise's behavior is because she comes from a poor background, and works the graveyard shift on an assembly line at a gas meter factory to be able to pay tuition. Being pushed into a corner by her classmates about her life away from school, Louise, rather than tell the truth, tells more than a little white lie about a fleeting and chance encounter with Gina, and more specifically the Marquis, who she implies is more than a friend. Thus sets into motion a series of events which will shift the dynamics between all the players and make Louise reevaluate her goal of being the greatest actress especially of the classics.—Huggo