Françoise Mallet-Joris

Hélène, a fragile and romantic teenager, discovers that her father, a rich business man, has a mistress. Curious, she decides to go and meet this woman who is described as strange. At the first chance she has she goes to her house in the Ramparts of Béguines... from then on she goes back often, discovering a new world of artists and nightowls where she also experiences love in the arms of Tamara.

Hélène Noris, a young Belgian woman from a bourgeois family, is haunted by a past affair with Tamara — now married to her father. Torn between desire and resentment toward Tamara’s conformist life, Hélène feels alienated in the provincial world she inhabits. To boost his social image, her stepfather René invites Parisian director Jean Gerfaud to stage an avant-garde version of Tartuffe. Tamara flirts with him, but Hélène seduces him first. A passionate, destructive affair begins, entangling love, jealousy, and ambition. When the play’s scandalous premiere sparks outrage, Jean marries Hélène, provoking Tamara’s fury. Yet Hélène, restless and defiant, betrays him with a soldier. In rage and humiliation, Jean confronts her in the “red room,” the space that once embodied their love and now their ruin.

Due to a garbage strike, inmates are called in to take care of the garbage collection. Taking advantage of this unexpected situation, three of them manage to elude their guards.

Agathe Perrin, a wealthy widow in her forties, lives with her ailing father in an estate on the shores of Lac du Bourget, not far from Aix-les-Bains. For the past four years, she has been involved in an affair with a twenty-four-year-old artist, Jackie, that is beginning to weigh heavily on her. The frequent visits of a brilliant Aix doctor to the sick old man's bedside have distracted Agathe from her very young lover. She'd like to send him away, but he clings to her desperately, and we witness the drama of this break-up, both feared and rejected by Agathe. Blinded by jealousy, Jackie decides to leave, but not without behaving like a spoiled, insolent child.