Having received a frosty reception when visiting her parents, Martha drags her husband Reymond and infant daughter Lise to Spain, to renew her acquaintance with her estranged sister Marie. After a quarrel, Marthe and her family return to France, where the young mother shows signs of increasing mental instability. Abandoning her family, Marthe goes to town to get drunk and ends up being raped. With Marthe in a psychiatric hospital, Reymond is left to take care of Lise alone whilst struggling to make a living selling second hand clothes in an open-air market. When Marthe leaves hospital, Reymond takes her and Lise to a holiday home in the country. But Martha's illness is far from cured...