Twenty years have passed. Thérèse lives alone in Paris. We exiled her there. She seems to be asking nothing more for life. She is sick and lives in slow motion. One day, we ring rue du Bac. It is Mary, her daughter, whom she sees so little. She is twenty years old now and comes to see her to escape her middle-class south-west. She is very in love with a boy, she expects from her mother a support, a freedom of point of view. His name is Murad. The arrival of her daughter awakens Therese with her reserve and torpor. It does not shock Mary, who is very busy with her love. Thérèse proposes to meet Mourad. She quickly understands that he is not willing to marry Mary but wants her without wanting to bond more deeply to her. It is she Therese, that the young man looks ... She wanted to help her daughter to be happy, a wish too official not to be suspicious. Here she is delivered to the power of her own seduction ...
1928년 프랑스 랑드 지방, 부유한 정치가의 딸인 테레즈는 드넓은 소나무 숲을 소유한 마을의 지주 베르나르와 정략 결혼을 한다. 총명하고 예민한 감수성을 지닌 그녀는 결혼을 하면 모든 것이 안정되고 평온해지리라 기대한다. 그러나, 고지식하고 가부장적인 남편과 속물적인 시부모에게 순종하며 살아가는 무미건조한 일상은 하루하루 그녀의 영혼을 질식해온다. 어느 날, 그녀의 가장 친한 친구이자 시누이인 안느가 자유로운 영혼을 지닌 청년, 장 아제베도와 사랑에 빠지고, 테레즈 또한 장에게 매혹되고 만다. 장과의 짧지만 강렬한 만남 이후, 새로운 삶에 대한 욕망이 불타오르는 것을 느끼던 테레즈는 남편 베르나르가 의사 처방으로 매일 마시는 약에 치명적인 독인 비소 성분이 미량 함유되었음을 알게 된다. 그리고 그녀가 원하기만 하면 그 함량을 몰래 늘릴 수도 있다는 것을 깨닫게 되는데...
Thérèse is living in a provincial town, unhappily married to Bernard, a dull, pompous man whose only interest is preserving his family name and property. They live in an isolated country mansion surrounded by servants. Early in her marriage her only comforts are her fondness for Bernard's pine-tree forest, which was her primary reason for marrying him, and her love for her sister-in-law and Bernard's half-sister, Anne. The movie recounts in flashback the circumstances that led to her being charged with poisoning her husband.
Marcelle de Barthas is young French widow, who since her husband’s death some seven years previously, has lived a secluded life in her country house, with her four children. The eldest one, Emmy, is a beautiful and pure young girl of seventeen, who tentatively believes she has a calling to the religious life. The second child, Bertrand, aged fifteen, has been sent to England for an exchange holiday with a young English boy, Harry Fanning, and when the play opens, the French children are excitedly awaiting his arrival. Also living with the family is a French governess, and a tutor, Blaise Lebel. Lebel has a sombre power over the family, and it is the ‘intrusion’ of Harry that sets in motion in him a wave of resentment and fear.
