Desperately unhappy in her marriage, Madeleine Beudet takes refuge from her bourgeois existence in piano-playing. One day, her husband receives tickets for a performance of Faust. She refuses to go with him and he locks the piano. Left alone in the house, Madame Beudet attempts to flee reality with the help of her imagination, but memories of her husband get in the way. Her yearning for escape becomes a desire to murder. Often presented as the first truly feminist film.