It’s a spring night in Aix-en-Provence. Christian Lespinglet, a gallery operator deeply in debt, fishes Boudu, a homeless person, out of the canal where he is trying to drown himself. He unwillingly takes Boudu home, with the intention of looking after him for a few hours.
< The unexpected arrival of Boudu is like a crazy dog in the game of ninepins that is Christian’s life. Caught between his wife Yseult, suffering from depression and taking too many pills to get over it, and an art gallery on the edge of bankruptcy, Christian is a yuppie choking under the strain.
He chases after his lost charm by desperately trying to seduce Coralie, his assistant. He chases after success by trying to get Hubert, a local artist suffering a creative crisis, to paint. The Boudu whirlwind, whose temporary stay becomes permanent, sweeps away the shaky house of cards the couple has built. Unbearable, rude, naïve, selfish, this amateur poet settles in, sowing discord and further destabilizing Christian and Yseult, and Coralie and Hubert, all of whom are already assailed by doubts. But his presence also reveals aspects of the four that they never would have expected.
Boudu cures depression, artists’ block and is even comes in quite handy useful as a surrogate child.