Capucine saves herself from deportation to Auschwitz by highlighting her connections to Parisian design houses, and she is sent to a little-known prison camp located in the heart of Paris, within the Levitan department store. There, hundreds of prisoners are forced to sort through, repair, and put on display the massive quantities of art, furniture, and household goods looted from Jewish homes and businesses. Forced to wait on German officials and their wives and mistresses, Capucine struggles to hold her tongue in order to survive, remembering happier days spent in the art salons, ateliers, and jazz clubs of Montmartre in the 1920s. Meanwhile, Capucine's estranged daughter, Mathilde, remains in the care of her conservative paternal grandparents, who prosper under the Nazi occupation. They counsel Mathilde to accommodate herself to the new regime, but after her mother is arrested and then a childhood friend goes missing, the usually obedient Mathilde finds herself drawn into the shadowy world of Paris's Resistance fighters. As her mind opens to new ways of looking at the world, Mathilde also begins to see her unconventional mother in a different light. When an old acquaintance arrives to go 'shopping' at the Levitan department store on the arm of a Nazi officer and secretly offers to help Capucine get in touch with Mathilde, this seeming kindness could have dangerous consequences.
