Twenty years after the riveting freeze-frame that punctuated The 400 Blows and began the careers of Léaud and Truffaut, the director looks back with affectionate triste on the Antoine Doinel cycle. Antoine and Christine have separated, and he is seeing a new woman when Colette (Marie-France Pisier, reprising her role from Antoine and Colette) re-enters his life and encourages him to write a novel. At the last, the Doinel saga is suffused with bittersweet pain at the fragility of romantic love and the transience of relationships.