Gilles' wife, Elise, who smiles when she thinks of him, cooks and scrubs and cheerfully makes love to him, suspects during her third pregnancy that he is having an affair with her coquettish younger sister, Victorine. Elise suffers, usually in silence. She listens to her husband rave; she asks her priest; she breaks picture frames; she...

A prison guard is attracted to a woman at his weekly tango class. They meet again when she visits her husband in the prison where he works and he is drawn into her complicated romantic life. Meanwhile the prisoners are learning the tango.