Marie, who works as a successful door-to-door encyclopedia salesperson, has been married to her husband Francois for 12 years and has a two-year-old son. Though she is relatively content with her life, she feels something is wanting. Enter 50-year old African-American Bill. Initially she is annoyed by his insouciance, but she finds that she is irresistibly attracted to him. Soon the two are in the midst of sordid illicit affair. She knows little about her new lover, and he seems uninterested in learning about her, but the long sessions of lovemaking are something else entirely. Feeling out of control, Marie is increasingly repelled by her own actions. Psychologically, she struggles to reconcile her torrid encounters with Bill and mundane domestic chores such as bathing her son. Moreover, she finds herself incapable of hiding her adulterous behavior, rather she comes home with scratches and hickeys all over her body, to the devastation Francois.
Acting
Anne Coesens' physical unraveling is devastatingly specific.
Direction
Wagon's unflinching close-ups refuse to let you look away.
Director
Virginie Wagon
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Tony Todd took the role specifically to subvert his Candyman horror persona in European art cinema.
The film sparked controversy in France for its frank depiction of interracial desire—rarely centering a Black American man's erotic power over a white bourgeois woman.
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