Gray-haired furniture retailer Paul Winkelmann still has his dinner cooked and his laundry done by his mother. He spends his evenings playing Scrabble with Mama's friends and discussing the role of women in society in his carnival club. When he meets psychologist Margarete Tietze, Pussi finally begins to rebel against his dominant mother.
Claudie, a young French woman, inherits her uncle's property in Algeria, much to the disappointment of her scheming cousins Diane and Manuel. On the ferry she meets and falls for Pierre, an idle young man who has squandered his inheritance and is on his way to beg from Christian, his rich but rough-and-ready uncle, who owns a neighbouring farm to Claudie's. Made to work on the farm by Christian as a loan condition, Pierre is soon a changed man, and proposes to Claudie. But when his Arab friend Zoubir invites the Europeans on a hunting party, Diane and Manuel see their chance to move against their cousin.