The Adventures of Antoine Doinel

Antoine is a pre-adolescent in conflict with institutions: school and his family distress him, for different reasons. One day, Antoine decides to skip school and ends up getting into trouble, which only increases the dissatisfaction of his parents who decide that it is best for the boy to face his actions. Considered one of the greatest French films in history, a lighthearted and rebellious portrait, not at all complacent.

The third in a series of films (following The 400 Blows and the short Antoine and Collette) featuring writer-directed François Truffaut's alter-ego, Antoine Doinel (Leaud), the story resumes with Antoine being discharged from military service. His sweetheart Christine's father lands Antoine a job as a security guard, which he promptly loses. Stumbling into a position assisting a private detective, Antoine falls for his employers' seductive wife, Fabienne, and finds that he must choose between the older woman and Christine.

Antoine and Christine Doinel are still in the honeymoon phase of their young marriage, there a playfulness in their interactions with each other as they live a somewhat bohemian life, he working for a florist in their neighborhood with his main job, which he carries out in their apartment building's courtyard, dying white flowers vivid colors, she a concert violinist and violin teacher. They also have cordial relations with idiosyncratic neighbors and other neighborhood regulars. Their union is not outwardly obvious in the differences in their background, Antoine who uses writing as a means to deal emotionally with what was his neglected childhood in a broken home, while Christine's family is bourgeois. When Christine becomes pregnant, Antoine goes on a search for a higher paying and more stable job, he, in part out of a misunderstanding, able to get one working for an American hydraulics company. It is through that job that Antoine meets and begins an affair with Kyoko, the daughter of a Japanese client. The affair may jeopardize the life he has with Christine - while it is arguably more a fling for Antoine in dealing with these changes, it is love for Kyoko.

Antoine Doinel is now more than thirty. He divorces from Christine. He is a proofreader, and is in love with Sabine, a record seller. Colette, his teenager love, is now a lawyer. She buys Antoine's first published autobiographical novel. They meet again in a station...