Curtis McLeod is a self-taught author from rural Missouri who has just recently gotten employed by a film studio in Los Angeles. He is sent to Paris and stays at Hotel Elysée to fix the script for a film starring Maya Kinsolving, one of the studio's shooting stars. Maya Kinsolving is young and beautiful, but her lifestyle and rumors about her affairs have almost made her untenable. After initial differences, Curtis and Maya marry, but what Maya doesn't suspects is that Curtis feels attracted to men.Curtis keeps returning to Europe every year, always staying at the Elysée. He meets Robert Lewis, a young artist and college dropout who relocated to Paris with his boyfriend after initial success as an artist but then finds himself penniless after failing to adapt to the market. Curtis becomes Robert's patron, helping him to build a career. They travel across Europe, trying to stay away from the journalists and paparazzi - and of course to conceal their affair from Curtis' wife, Maya.Torn between his affection to Maya and Robert, passion and jealousy, Curtis has to learn that the pretty world of delusions they have built around themselves cannot last forever.