FOR ALL THE YOUNG LOVERS OF THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD...

GeneviÈve, 17, lives with her widowed mother, who owns an umbrella shop in Cherbourg. She and Guy, a twenty-year-old auto mechanic, are secretly in love and want to marry, but when she reveals this to her mother, her mother objects on the grounds that GeneviÈve is too young and Guy is not mature or well-established enough, particularly since he has not yet done his required military service. Guy is wounded and is discharged before his two-year term is up, but when he returns to Cherbourg GeneviÈve has already married and moved away. He struggles with depression and anger, but eventually is healed by falling in love with and marrying Madeleine, a young woman who had been caring for his now-deceased aunt Élise. Using an inheritance from his aunt, Guy fulfills his ambition of opening a service station. Years later, the now conspicuously wealthy GeneviÈve, traveling with her son, Guy's child, accidentally meet Guy at his service station. While the two have only a brief conversation about the state of their respective lives, the conversation is clearly fraught with unspoken fondness and regret.