A winter morning at the Saint-Malo station. Mrs Lelièvre (Jacqueline Bisset) has come to pick up Sophie (Sandrine Bonnaire), the pearl who has been hired to care of the family house. Sophie gives great satisfaction, nothing is too hard for her. Is it her lack of emotion that makes her seem strange ? Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert), the bright, inquisitive, village postmistress, uses Sophie as an excuse to enter the house. The two young women’s carefully hidden secrets bring them together. Friendship, then partnership. What secrets, for what partnership ?