Trama

A wealthy plantation owner is captivated by a mysterious woman with a shady past.

Louis Mahe is a tobacco planter at Reunion Island. He is waiting for Julie Roussel to marry him. He only knows her by mail. The woman that comes does not like the picture he got, but he marries her anyway. Soon, she flees with Louis' money. She was not the real Julie Roussel but Marion. Louis tries to find her... Another Truffaut's film about passion.—Yepok

In Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, the owner of a cigarette factory Louis Mahé is engaged through correspondence with Julie Roussel and he does not know her. When Julie arrives in the island to get married with Louis, he waits for her in the docks but Louis does not recognize Julie in the passenger vessel and finds that she is totally different from the picture she had sent to Louis. They get married and Louis shares his bank accounts with her. When Julie's sister writes a letter to Louis asking her sister to write to her, Louis discovers that the woman is not Julie who is missing. Further, he finds that the woman has cleared his bank accounts and left the island. Louis and Julie's sister hire an efficient private detective Comolli and Louis travels to France seeking the woman, but he has a nervous breakdown in Nice and is submitted to an intense sleeping therapy in a clinic. He recovers and finds that the woman, actually Marion Vergano, works in the Phoenix Club Privé in Antibes and lives in the low-budget Monorail Hotel. Louis breaks in her room and when she arrives from the club, she tells that she was happy with him but her former dangerous lover Richard had blackmailed her. Louis is still in love with Marion and escapes with her to the countryside. But Comolli is chasing Marion in France accused of murdering Julie.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

When wealthy tobacco plantation owner, Louis (Jean-Paul Belmondo) meets his new mail-order bride Julie (Catherine Deneuve) at the Reunion Island shipyard, he is smitten by her beauty and overlooks her many mysterious habits. After they wed, he comes to realize that she is not the woman he corresponded with at all and she soon disappears with his entire bank account. His heartbreak and her cold betrayals drive him to track Julie down to France. She admits her real name- Marion- and that she had a male accomplice aboard ship who killed the actual Julie, but he had double-crossed Marion and ran with the money. Full of remorse, she asks him to kill her to end her sordid life. Louis cannot resist her candid confession and becomes both her accomplice and protector - even finding himself compelled to murder, to keep her from prison. He finally faces a test at Marion's hands that convinces her she is worthy of his love.