Alice Prin is big-hearted but tempestuous, and falls on hard times in postwar Paris after knocking out her boss in a flash of temper. Her luck changes when she falls in with a band of artists and becomes the most popular and lively of models, and with success and notoriety transforms herself into Kiki. After initial misadventures in love, she meets photographer Man Ray, an American in Paris, and becomes his subject and lover for 6 heady and stormy years. She appears in iconic photographs, Dada films, nightclubs and parties, affections and beds, brawls and prison to become Queen of Montparnasse just as their relationship crashes, along with Wall Street, and the era comes to an end.