Newly married couple Juliette and a ship captain Jean struggle through marriage as they travel on the L'atalante along with the captain's first mate Le père Jules and a cabin boy.
When Juliette marries Jean, she comes to live with him as he captains a river barge. Besides the two of them, are a cabin boy and the strange old second mate, Pere Jules. Soon bored by life on the river, she slips off to see the nightlife when they land at Paris. Angered by this, Jean sets off, leaving Juliette behind. Overcome by grief and longing for his wife, Jean falls into a depression and Pere Jules goes searching for Juliette.—dlevy1201
Juliette, who has lived her entire life in a small provincial French town, has just married Jean, a river barge captain. They will live aboard his barge, the Atalante, with his crew of two others, Père Jules and a young man they call the Kid. Elderly Jules, who keeps company with his menagerie of stray cats, is seemingly a little off kilter. He has traveled the world as a seaman, filling his cabin with curios he picked up on his travels. On the opposite extreme is Juliette, who has seen nothing of the world, and with wide eyes is looking forward to the new adventures in exotic locales--at least to her--with Jean. Juliette's arrival onto the Atalante disrupts the routine of the other three, who are used to the bachelor life. But the interactions between the four and their individual wants--especially Jean, Juliette and Jules--affects the harmony aboard the Atalante, with an unexpected alliance between two which could bring that harmony back into balance.—Huggo
Looking so beautiful in her dainty pale-white wedding dress, wide-eyed village girl Juliette leaves behind her tight-knit community to start anew aboard the weather-beaten barge, Atalante, with professional skipper Jean, her young husband. However, instead of filling her soul with adventure and exciting experiences, Juliette shares her already brief honeymoon on the Seine with Jules, a tattooed sea dog and devoted ailurophile, and the vessel's nameless cabin boy. Suddenly, the dream loses some of its lustre, and the bright lights of the seductive Parisian metropolis start to fade. Is this what she's been waiting for all her life? Is Juliette brave enough to sacrifice everything for a charming illusion?—Nick Riganas
