Paul, thirty or so, lives in a Paris apartment with his aunts, two old aristocrats who have raised him since he was two and who dream of seeing him become a virtuoso pianist.

Paul is a sweet man-child, raised - and smothered - by his two eccentric aunts in Paris since the death of his parents when he was a toddler. Now thirty-three, he still does not speak. (He does express himself through colorful suits that would challenge any Wes Anderson character in nerd chic.) Paul's aunts have only one dream for him: to win piano competitions. Although Paul practices dutifully, he remains unfulfilled until he submits to the interventions of his upstairs neighbor. Suitably named after the novelist, Madame Proust offers Paul a concoction that unlocks repressed memories from his childhood and awakens the most delightful of fantasies.—Jiilo_Kim

Paul (Guillaume Gouix), a young virtuoso pianist and a fan of chouquettes, lives with his two aristocratic aunts, Annie (Bernadette Lafont) and Anna (Hélène Vincent), who run a dance class of which he is the official pianist. He has been mute since the age of two, when he saw his parents, Anita and Marcel, die in front of him. One day, he brings a record to Mr. Coelho (Luis Rego), the blind piano tuner who dropped it down the stairs, and finds it in the home of Mrs. Proust (Anne Le Ny), a neighbor who grows vegetables at home and plays the ukulele. In secret from his aunts, he undertakes therapy with Mrs. Proust which consists of strange herbal teas whose taste is masked by madeleines and which make him relive in flashes of memory the events which led to the tragedy. In turn, Paul learns to manage his relationships with music and with Michelle (Kea Kaing), a young Chinese cellist and adopted daughter of a friend of his aunts.