Paris in the 1960s: Jean-Louis Joubert, the fiercely conservative boss of a trust company and head of an upper-middle-class nuclear family, introduces a new housekeeper from Spain to her duties. After initial friction, he discovers that she is part of a whole host of Spanish maids who live a meagre but much more fun-loving existence on the 6th floor of his bourgeois home. As a silent alliance with the Spanish women is established, Joubert's frozen marriage comes to a head and the master of the house takes refuge in the attic floor himself.