Mathieu Amalric reprises the role of Paul Dédalus from Arnaud Desplechin's My Sex Life, Or How I Got into an Argument in My Golden Days, the character's origin story. Paul, now an anthropologist, prepares to leave Tajikistan and reflects on his life. He has a series of flashbacks that unfold in three episodes (newcomer Quentin Dolmaire portrays Paul as an adolescent). The first includes his childhood in Roubaix, then he remembers his trip to the USSR, where a clandestine mission led him to offer up his own identity to a young Russian, whom he considers a phantom twin for the remainder of his life. He remembers himself at nineteen in Roubaix, his sister Delphine, his cousin Bob, the parties with Pénélope, Mehdi and Kovalki, the friend who was to betray him. He remembers university life in Paris most of all, he remembers Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet), a beautiful, rude, haughty soul and the love of his life.
