Raulhac, Cantal, France, September 1, 1905. In the forest surrounding his hometown, the young seminarian Bruno Reidal murders a child and then surrenders himself to the authorities.

This young couple knows vaguely that the love which bonds them can be their way of freeing themselves from the tenacious resentments and suspicions peculiar to this remote region of France, stigmatized as it is by a survival economy. But the social bonds that the adults forge are unexpectedly violent.

A depressive director returns to his childhood countryside to prepare a new film, accompanied by an alcoholic producer. But things don't go according to plan, and ghosts from the past resurface.