In yet another installation of Claude Chabrol's chronicle of the degradation of the bourgeois class, Romy Schneider plays the bored and wealthy Julie, living a life of indolent luxury along the beaches of St. Tropez with her loud-mouthed, hard-drinking, and impotent husband, Louis (Rod Steiger). When a handsome new neighbor, Jeff, arrives on the scene, the stage is set for intrigue and adultery. Despite the seemingly standard-issue elements of the story, Chabrol transcends the pulp roots of the murder mystery, using them as a base from which to create his own uniquely formed vision of soured love and ruined marriage. He also uses his story to comment on human nature and bourgeois morality. When Louis drunkenly complains that he and Julie never make love, Julie and Jeff spark a torrid affair in which plans to dispose of Louis are of the first order. When the deed is done, the plot is far from over as Chabrol creates endless sidesteps and surprises, constructing a torturous and labyrinthine nightmare that consumes all of the characters. As the plot comes to its unlikely and slightly absurd climax, even the forces of justice are negligible in the face of the powerful and mysterious maneuvers of human desire and deception.