The former famous painter Frenhofer lives quietly with his wife on a countryside residence in the French Provence. When the young artist Nicolas visits him with his girlfriend Marianne, Frenhofer decides to start again the work on a painting he long ago stopped: La Belle Noiseuse. And he wants Marianne as model.

A mysteriously linked pair of young women find their daily lives pre-empted by a strange boudoir melodrama that plays itself out in a hallucinatory parallel reality.

After finding love and success in Italy, French actress Camille returns to Paris, the city she fled 3 years ago. She secretly dreads confronting her ex-boyfriend Pierre. Her new lover Ugo also has a secret, he’s meeting with the intriguing Dominique while on his quest for an unpublished manuscript.

In eighteenth-century France, a girl is forced against her will to take vows as a nun. Three mothers superior treat her in radically different ways, ranging from maternal concern, to sadistic persecution, to lesbian desire.

ulien is a clockmaker with destructive impulses who decides to blackmail Madame X, a rich, attractive woman who traffics in stolen antiques. What he doesn’t know is that she has an even more dangerous secret that leads him to Marie, with whom he had fallen in love a year earlier.