In 1949, fifty-four years earlier, Clément Mathieu (Gérard Jugnot), a failed musician, arrives at Fond de l'Étang ("Bottom of the Pond"), a French boarding school for troubled boys, to work as a supervisor and teacher. At the gate, he sees a very young boy, Pépinot (Maxence Perrin), waiting for Saturday, when he says his father will pick him up. The viewers later learn that his parents were killed in the Second World War during the Nazi occupation of France, but Pépinot does not know this.