In 1972 16-year-old Marie-Claire became pregnant after a rape. With help from her mother Michelle and three other women, she underwent a clandestine abortion. Under a 1920 law, the five women were arrested and charged. Supported by a procession of well-known French (eg Simone de Beauvoir), the five were released and the law was adapted.
Maria Garcia (Carmen Maura) is a television journalist and she's about to be a single mother. Her career foremost in her mind, she doesn't slow down even for a minute, despite her pregnancy. She is, however, taking Lamaze classes and is quite competently coping with the romantic attentions of a man she's not very interested in. It's not at all irrelevant that her news beat includes stories on terrorism, the greenhouse effect, pollution and genetic engineering, because when her baby's due date comes and goes, she starts hearing from her infant from in the womb. It is telling her that it and many other babies are refusing to be born into such a horrible world. She learns that this is true, and that the children born through induced labor are dying.
Events of strange and serious nature mark the invention and the manufacture of the nylon stockings. For example inhuman exploitation of workers in artificial silk factories. The US army was a substantial promoter of the nylons.
Rosalie has had enough of "family life", in other words of Georges, her weak husband, and of her cantankerous mother-in-law. One day she decides to hit the road, not knowing where she is going. Joséphine is fed up with... being fed up with life. One day she decides to say no to cancer and depression and she hits the road. Her goal is to join her daughter Carole with whom she has been at odds for ten years. Rosalie and Joséphine, the two confused women meet, journey together, help each other and little by little become inseparable friends.
