Claire is an anthropology student - something of an eternal student as she is almost 30 years of age. Her life is one big collection of anxieties and frustrations: her parents are small-minded; her kid sister is always in trouble; her lover is a married man now having a hard time coming to terms with his adultery, and she is facing the terrifying perspective of having to defend her thesis. So Claire transforms all this into physical symptoms and falls ill. Because of her terrible migraines, her doctor has her admitted to a hospital neurology department. The film tells the story of the month that Claire spends in the hospital one winter in a room she shares with a young woman, Odette who is paralyzed in both legs, and an old woman, Eleonore who is in the early stages of dementia. The film also portrays how Claire comes out of it, curiously healed and more mature thanks to her experience of other people′s suffering.