Buñuel updated the famous Mirbeau novel about the decadent French upper classes of the nineteenth century to 1928, when Fascism was not the unspoken undercurrent but, rather, a movement of growing strength in France. Against a fittingly autumnal landscape on a country estate, the master unfolds his darkly humorous tale of a chambermaid, both demure and cunning (as portrayed by Jeanne Moreau), who takes a position in a cheerless château and immediately becomes the newest objet d'art for a whole family of perfectly ordinary perverts, from the shoe-fetishist paterfamilias down to the gamekeeper, Joseph, a reactionary and a rapist. As always, Buñuel's canvas is filled with surprising and illuminating detail, and the wide screen shows off the two tricks of his trade--juxtaposition and foregrounding--to their best advantage. The snails that meander up the legs of the neighbor's daughter after she has been attacked by Joseph tell all, in giant microcosm.