France, 1930’s. A woman tries to free herself from her stifling marriage and the ruling social conventions of the time.

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Thérèse (Audrey Tautou), wife of Deysqueyroux, has a hard time trying to impose her avant-garde ideas of freedom onto her marriage. When her best friend and sister-in-law finds true love, the family counts on her to make Thérèse see reason: marriage is for strengthening alliances between the upper classes and not about letting feelings destroy everything – certainly not the family business. Unable to stand her marriage to a simple man (Gilles Lellouche), who's happy to spend time doing nothing and satisfied with what he considers a successful union, Thérèse decides to poison him. After that insane act, the young woman finds herself even more muzzled than before, completely imprisoned by suffocating social conventions...

Claude Miller's last movie, an adaption of the novel by François Mauriac in which Thérèse Desqueyroux, subtly played by Audrey Tautou, is caught by the conventions of the time. The quality of this social drama gushes from the classicism of the film's form, pointing an accusing finger at the conditions of women in the 1930's.