Based on Madame de La Fayette's 1678 novel La Princesse de Clèves, the film follows a talented photographer who lands a lucrative job in Paris with a scandal-mongering tabloid and becomes romantically involved with an eccentric children's book publisher while resisting the sexual advances of another photographer.

[2] Talented Canadian photographer Clélia lands a lucrative job in Paris with a tabloid called La Verite run by scandal-mongerer Rupert MacRoi.

Accompanying her daughter to Paris, she tells Clélia that her strongest principle was honour, and encourages her to get married and settle down.

Clélia's first photos for La Verite creates a sensation and she is congratulated by her colleagues—all except Némo, a sexy young photographer with a poor background, who propositions when they meet.

He delivers his wedding photos to Clélia's home, walking in through an open back door and handing them to her mother in bed.

Upset and suspecting her daughter is having an affair, Clélia's mother searches Clelia's photos for images of Nemo and then collapses.

She sees him taking photos through her house Windows and panics, running upstairs and demanding her husband give her a baby.

At the celebration afterwards, Némo gets drunk and talks about his investigation into the illegal organ trade trying to impress his father who says he'll get himself killed.

Nemo and Clélia take the train back to Paris together and at the station she sees the ghosts of her mother and father looking happy.

After Némo is attacked by a gang hired by the illegal organ traffickers, Clélia asks him to show her the underworld he is investigating.

After he leaves, Clélia calls the offices of La Verite to inform them of Bishop Bernard's "love-nest" in Brittany, presumably to make it difficult for Clève to stay there.

Clélia watches the television coverage of the bishop's humiliation but he says a person cannot experience the divine if they do not seize happiness.

During the session, snipers attempt to kill Némo, causing the bike to be set on fire.

A few years later, while taking photographs in a monastery, Clélia, now with short hair, sees an English-language MacRoi Production film on TV called The Princess of Cleve about her life, directed by Némo.

She goes into the garden and places her wedding rings on a tree branch, while the ghost of her late husband looks on.