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Sarah Morton (Rampling), a middle-aged English mystery writer who has written a successful series of novels featuring a single detective, is having writer's block that is impeding her next book. She feels uninspired and jaded.

Sarah's publisher, John Bosload (Dance), offers her his country house near Lacoste, France for some rest and relaxation. After becoming comfortable with the run of the house, Sarah's vacation is interrupted by a young woman claiming to be the publisher's daughter, Julie (Sagnier). She shows up one night claiming to be taking time off from work herself. She also claims that her mother used to be Bosload's mistress, but that he would not leave his family.

Julie's sex life consists of one-night stands with various oafish men, and a competition of personalities develops between the two women. At first Sarah regards Julie as a distraction from her writing. She uses earplugs to allow her to sleep during Julie's noisy nighttime adventures, although she nonetheless has a voyeuristic fascination with them. Later she abandons the earplugs during one of Julie's trysts. It is clear that she envies Julie's lifestyle. The competition comes to the fore when a local waiter, Franck (Jean-Marie Lamour), is involved. Julie wants him but he appears to prefer the more mature Sarah, having struck up a relationship with her during her frequent lunches at the bistro.

An unexpected tragedy occurs after a night of flirting between the three. After swimming together in the pool, Franck refuses to allow Julie to continue performing oral sex on him, once Sarah, who watches them from the balcony, throws a rock into the water. Franck feels frightened and tells Julie he is leaving.

The next day Franck is missing.

While investigating Franck's disappearance, Sarah learns that Julie's mother has been dead for some time, though Julie had claimed that she was still alive. She returns to the villa, where a confused Julie thinks that Sarah is her mother, and has a breakdown. She eventually recovers, and confesses that Franck is dead. Julie repeatedly hit him over the head with a rock as he tried to leave her at the pool. His body is in one of the outhouses.

Sarah suddenly becomes the young girl's friend and protector, and assists in helping her to bury Franck's body. The relationship between the two changes and they appear to have become friends. Sarah even seduces and sleeps with the very elderly gardener Marcel (Marc Fayolle) when he becomes suspicious of the mound of fresh soil where the body is buried.

Julie leaves, thanking Sarah for her help and leaving her the manuscript of an unpublished novel written by her late mother, which she had previously claimed that John made her burn.

Sarah returns to England and visits her publisher's office with her new novel. His daughter also shows up in the office. However, the girl in England is a different person from the woman that Sarah lived with in France. Her name is Julia, not Julie, and she barely acknowledges Sarah when their paths cross. Sarah has flashbacks of scenes at the villa where it is Julia and not Julie who is sharing the house, a disparity for which no explicit explanation is given. It is possible that she may have imagined the events at the manor house as a way of overcoming her writer's block.

Deleted scenes, included in the DVD release, show Sarah observing a young woman on the train in France, apparently hiking across country and having some trouble with the ticket inspector. She then makes notes as if the girl has given her the idea for a character.

There is also a deleted scene where Sarah and John talk by telephone and he refers to his daughter being at the house. The deletion of this scene suggests that the intent was to deepen the ambiguity, since in the released version he never makes any reference to his daughter being in France.

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