Jean (Jeane Yanne) and Catherine (Marlene Jobert) are a couple whose every move charts an advancement deeper into an emotional warzone. Theirs is the classic and the tragic case of an emotional abuse centered around a perplexing, but powerful, interdependency. At last the point arrives that determines the relationship, with all its weekend holidays, its apologies and submissions, can go no further - and, in a final shot of genius, Pialat discloses all the ways in which the future might be at once liberated, and enslaved, by the past.