Springtime. Fred and Mick, two old friends who are nearing their eighties, are on vacation in an elegant hotel at the foot of the Alps. Fred, a composer and conductor, is now retired. Mick, a film director, is still working. Both friends know that their time is running out and they decide to face their future together. They gaze, with curiosity and tenderness, upon their children's confused lives, Mick's enthusiastic young screen writers, and the other hotel guests. While Mick scrambles to finish the screenplay for what he imagines will be his last important film, Fred has no intention of resuming his musical career, which he abandoned some years before. But someone wants at all costs to hear Fred's last compositions and to watch him conduct an orchestra once again.