The Three Wise Men – Balthazar, Melchior and Gaspard – are on their way to Bethlehem to pay homage to the infant Jesus when they are suddenly, an inexplicably, transported two thousand years into the future. They find themselves walking the streets of Paris, where they encounter a young woman called Macha who, they are convinced, will lead them to the newborn Messiah.

Paris in the 1920s. Marguerite Dumont is a wealthy woman with a passion for music and the opera. For years, she has performed regularly for a circle of guests. But Marguerite sings tragically out of tune and no one has ever told her. Her husband and her close friends have always encouraged her in her illusions. Things become very complicated the day she gets it into her head to perform in front of a genuine public, at the Opera.

A sixteen-year-old boy insinuates himself into the house of a fellow student from his literature class and writes about it in essays for his French teacher. Faced with this gifted and unusual pupil, the teacher rediscovers his enthusiasm for his work, but the boy’s intrusion will unleash a series of uncontrollable events.