Jeanne Moreau plays the title character, a seemingly-respectable schoolteacher in a small French village, who is actually an undetected sociopath.

However, he is innocent; the culprit is the local school teacher, "Mademoiselle", a recent arrival admired by all, but sexually repressed and obsessed with Manou.

In the meantime, Manou's son Bruno has witnessed her sociopathic nature in private and in the classroom, where she initially favours him as a pupil but then begins to verbally abuse him and repeatedly humiliates him.

The original script was written by French writers Jean Genet and Marguerite Duras as a vehicle for actress Anouk Aimée, to be directed by Georges Franju.

[3] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times criticised the film as "murky, disjointed and unbearably tedious", while praising Moreau's performance and the visuals.

"[6] Writing for the British Film Institute, Alex Ramon called it "a unique work in Richardson’s canon, made at the time of several ambitious, much-panned projects, this oneiric evocation of destruction and desire feels fresh.