Léa de Lonval (Michelle Pfeiffer) realizes that the time has come for her to retire as Paris's most envied seductress of the rich and famous. After all, though she's still breathtaking, she's not getting any younger. Just as she starts wondering what her future holds, along
comes her archrival Charlotte Peloux (Kathy Bates), a notoriously manipulative gossip, with an
unusual proposition. It seems that Charlotte's 19-year-old son?a bon vivant nicknamed Chéri (Rupert Friend)?is gorgeous, charming and a complete disappointment to her. Fed up with his petulance, Charlotte slyly suspects Léa can knock some sense into the boy with her worldly ways.
But Léa does far more than that and six years later, she and Chéri are still living together in a most outrageous fashion. Naturally, they know this state of affairs can't go on forever. But when Charlotte Peloux returns to match Chéri to a girl his own age for marriage and break up their adventuresome tryst, no one is prepared for what truly lies beneath their frivolous affair.