本片叙述一对男女的爱情故事,重心在于德纳芙扮演的女主角埃里娜,她有天开车撞倒了过马路的吉勒尔,但意外令两人结识并播下缘分。吉勒尔被美艳有气质的埃里娜所陶醉而展开追求,但她却拒人于千里外,冷漠而孤僻,似乎隐藏着难解心事。吉勒尔用尽方式打破了她的藩篱,并与之倾诉心事秘密,一个原来平静安稳的世界瞬时破灭。Hélène, a distracted pill-popping anesthetist, almost runs down Gilles one evening on a Biarritz street. She is still numb from the drowning death earlier that year of her lover, a visionary architect. Gilles presses for a relationship, then backs away, deciding she could never love someone of lower class and limited prospects. But she does fall in love with him and gradually her depression eases. As she heals, he becomes obsessed with her lover's talents and his own limitations, behaving bizarrely and pushing her away. How these conflicts play out becomes the movie's story.