Adrian Penketh's adaptation of Maupassant's first novel. Jeanne de Lamare - a sheltered and naive country aristocrat - leaves her convent education filled with thoughts of love and romance.

Lamare marries a smallminded local landowner, and begins to discover how rotten and treacherous adult life is all around her. Jeanne believes that conceiving a second child will heal the ache in her heart caused by a loveless marriage in a rotten world.