Throughout his very short life, Luc Dietrich, the author of the novel «L’Apprentissage de la Ville» and the hero of this film, was constantly swinging back and forth between a life of abject poverty and one of wealth and luxury; between Lucrèce, a young woman he idealized and Arlette, a woman of the world who had saved his life; between the ascetic temptation of a spiritual, philosophical quest and the more destructive temptation of a life of crime and its secrecy. Luc's education is first and foremost an education in women, in the dark secret of the streets, in closed windows, in the violence of a knife fight, or in a smile rejected, in wandering, in the world, in the great and the small,in the city which protects him, where he lays himself open....
(http://www.archipel33.fr/site/content/view/357/4/lang,fr/)