At a prestigious art school in Arles, a young student, Bernard, falls out with his austere art master. Bernard has always had a burning ambition to go to Paris and work among the very artists his master scorns, and only Bijou, his grandmother, has truly encouraged him to represent nature in a new way through his art. His art master, however, although aware of the boy's talent, almost breaks Bernard's spirit in his determination to make him conform.
Then a lone Dutch painter called Vincent arrives in town and moves to the yellow house next to the grocery shop where Bernard does odd jobs. None of the villagers know what to make of Vincent. He spends his days either walking around town in paint-splashed clothes or slashing paint wildly across canvases and even the walls of his rooms.
Young Bernard, however, is fascinated, and as he befriends the artist, he finds his life and concepts of art begin to change…
When his grandmother falls ill, Bernard longs to show her one of Vincent's pieces, but this ends in disaster when the piece is stolen. When Vincent has a nervous breakdown and slices off part of his ear, Bernard's art master thinks he has finally won, and that Bernard's will is at last broken. But something is about to happen that will confirm Bernard's belief in the Dutch painter's genius, and will give him the courage to seek his own destiny in art.
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