Unpolished and ultra-pragmatic industrialist Jean-Jacques Castella reluctantly attends Racine's tragedy "Berenice" in order to see his niece play a bit part. He is taken with the play's strangely familiar-looking leading lady Clara Devaux. During the course of the show, Castella soon remembers that he once hired and then promptly fired the actress as an English language tutor. He immediately goes out and signs up for language lessons. Thinking that he is nothing but an ill-tempered philistine with bad taste, Clara rejects him until Castella charms her off her feet.
Yvon Rance, who runs a hair salon in Brittany, only wants his beloved teenaged daughter Laetita to be happy, something he believes she'll be able to achieve by completing high school and then following in her father's professional footsteps. When Laetita tells him that she has been cast in the latest movie by renowned director Stephane, he is initially unimpressed. He grudgingly relents when he learns that the money she will make for a couple months of work is twice what he makes in a year.
The location is the town of El Paris. When ten-year-old boy Quasimodo shows signs of deformity, his well-to-do parents place him in the charge of the town’s mysterious evangelist, Frollo. In exchange, they adopt a Cuban girl, Esméralda, from a lower social class. Ten years later, El Paris is menaced by a serial killer, and Quasimodo is the prime suspect.
