Jeanne meets Louis as he is preparing to go to his brother's wedding, but fate intervenes as his father suffers a heart attack and the ceremony is postponed. A year later a double wedding takes place, one in which Jeanne and Louis are married in the ceremony together with his brother and bride. It is the outset of WWII in France. Louis, a military man, must go to the front and he is taken prisoner to a camp. While Jeanne awaits his return, she begins an affair with Henri, a comrade of Louis. It is clear Jeanne unhappiness is assuaged easily.After the war, Louis is posted to Berlin, where living conditions are poor. Bringing Jeanne along, they are housed with an impoverished industrialist and his son, Mattias. Jeanne is clearly attracted by the German man and they begin an affair that will put her marriage in jeopardy. Louis, finding out about her infidelity, even questions the paternity of his children, a doubt that will consume him forever.The director, Regis Wargnier, supposedly based the film on his own mother's life. It is curious, and at the same time, courageous for anyone to examine a life of a woman that showed no respect for the man she married and for her own family. Yet, the story is quite hard to take because of the nature of a lady that shows no redeeming qualities to speak of. The screenplay was written by the director and Alain LeHenry. As DBDumontiel points out in his commentary, Mr. Wargnier seems to be influenced by Douglas Sirk. His Jeanne is an ambivalent woman whose own libido takes over the better part of her.Emmanuelle Beart, a ravishing creature, shows an understanding for the woman she is playing. Daniel Auteuil is Louis the deceived husband that always returned to the woman that had no regard for him, or her family. Gabriel Barylli appears as Mattias, the German lover. He makes an impression as the tormented man passionately in love with another man's wife. The only reason for watching the film is because of the presence of Daniel Auteuil and Emmanuelle Beart.

Everyone seems to think that the wife was either a whore and the husband a hero or she was driven to it by loneliness (and the husband is still a hero)...I didn't see it either way, both are too black and white.For one we never really saw her loneliness I didn't think, plus she kept cheating on him even when he was back sometimes IIRC. Also she was out of control, and unable to commit one way or the other to either her husband or her lover.I thought the film was about two people with psychoemotional problems who stayed together simply because they were too afraid to separate...the husband's service seemed parasuicidal for example, and his family seemed to realize how unstable she was but he stuck with her (loyalty is not always a virtue).If the film was meant to be autobiographical then perhaps the director was stuck with certain plot developments? Or maybe his point was that the first experience of emotional deprivation was so scarring that it created a life-long pattern that would have not been there otherwise? But I think if she died because of a broken heart, even metaphorically, it meant from the get-go that she was torn between "desire and duty", i.e. a marriage to a respectable and appropriate partner and the person her heart and body desired. A little unclear but that is par for the course for French films in my experience, they are meant to provoke thought and discussion (unlike most American ones). Also I did not understand the title, unless the director was saying this is the emotional reality for most French women, for that generation or in general.P.S. I was also glad there was no nudity in the film. It would have been a cheap attempt at interjecting eroticism into the film IMO, such things can be inferred implicitly by adults.

Although based on the Director's memories of his own mother by giving it the title he has it's hard to figure out if he is 1) disillusioned with all French women and is 2) insinuating that French women as a sub-gender are, to a woman, incapable of fidelity and/or whores. The logical question we, as viewers, ask ourselves is why didn't Auteuil leave the army after World War 11, given that his wife had been unfaithful whilst he was a POW. Instead, he forgives her and promptly dashes off to another war leaving her to do the same thing again. Okay, if it's a true story he doesn't want to fictionalize if for the sake of logic and presumably he never asked his father that question. These carps to one side this remains a well-written and well-acted film.

A man goes to battle and kills other men while his woman stays home and makes love to other men. Wargnier's memories of his mother who starved for love and passion while her husband served in French colonies at war, is art soap with two of the greatest contemporary French actors making it worth the while.