A quick-tempered 60-year-old man in a French village who decides to go to school to finally learn to read and write and a busy young teacher tasked with educating him.

Nenette, who has the mental age of an 8-year-old, has always lived with her mother, who raised her alone. Nenette works, cleaning the community school, and her best friend is a tortoise. But when her mum dies, she faces life in a retirement home. But, as the institution doesn't accept animals, Nenette sets out with her suitcase and her tortoise, planning to find her father, whom she knows only by a yellowed photograph, a letter and an address.