Alexandre Astruc reveals the perverse side of gothic romance in this highly stylized adaptation of a Guy de Maupassant tale in which a young married couple finds extreme unhappiness in an isolated country mansion. What begins as a fairy tale romance between the pretty Maria Schell and the handsome Christian Marquand very soon shows its “true colors”; a story of passion and deception as rich and thick as a French sauce develops, but the characters, somehow, do not. It soon becomes evident that Astruc's method has little to do with character development and everything to do with a mise-en-scène in which color is coded, landscape is used to isolate and surrealize, and light is used “as an integral part of the drama, as another protagonist, somewhat like the presence of destiny which hovers continually over the heroine” (Astruc).