Set in 1944, the movie uses original archive footage as a backdrop against which the flesh and blood actors play their parts. In France, Countess Jeanne de Barante (Yacoub) has fallen into the hands of a group of soldiers and is being led towards the place of her execution. Over the course of this journey towards death, Jeanne thinks back on her story and the capricious fate which drove her to this end. From her childhood spent in her parents’ butcher’s in the French provinces in the early 20th century to the years she lived in Paris, alone and in poverty; from her encounter with the intrepid, elusive and passionate Celeste (Vianello) to the spiralling vortex of the Great War; from her reunion with the young count, Guillaume de Barante, who was party to the mistake she made in her youth, to their business in Brazil when coffee became all the rage in the roaring Twenties… Right up until her return to France, when Jeanne finally fulfilled her dream of going home to the village of her birth in the shoes of a countess…