A televsion reporter tasked with making a feature about Jean Jacques Rousseau's upcoming 300th birthday uses a local Swiss boy with a remarkable knowledge about the philosopher as her angle for the feature. She then brings in a local professor and Rousseau expert to try to explain how this boy could possibly know so much about a philosopher who died over a hundred years before he was even born. What unfolds is a story about friendship, nature, and the unequal distribution of wealth.