The Story of Marie and Julien

Julien Müller is a middle-aged clockmaker living a quiet, solitary life with his cat on the outskirts of Paris. He maintains a meticulous routine while secretly blackmailing Madame X, a woman involved in importing fake antique Chinese silks who may have murdered her sister.

By chance, Julien runs into Marie again, a radiant young woman he tangled with a year earlier. Their reunion quickly blossoms into passion, and Marie agrees to move in with him.

Marie moves in, but her presence feels unsettling at times: cool, sometimes almost absent, and she sometimes speaks in an unidentified language. Julien makes a small gesture of control by correcting 'bonjour' to 'bonsoir' to tether her to ordinary life.

Marie fills the attic with a compulsive need to decorate and rearrange, and she enacts dreams with a precise purpose she cannot fully explain. She experiences visions of a girl performing a forbidden sign, and these visions deepen the mystery surrounding her.

A mysterious hand delivers a letter to Marie, said to be from Madame X's sister Adrienne, which begins Adrienne’s haunting presence in Marie’s life. The letter blurs memory and revenant, making Marie feel watched by a past she cannot escape.

Madame X explains that Adrienne killed herself six months earlier, or so it seems, and the source of the letter remains unclear. Adrienne appears as a specter, telling Marie that she is 'like me,' pushing Julien toward the edge of confusion.

Julien seeks clues about Marie's past and asks Delphine, a former friend of Marie and Simon. Delphine hints that Marie's relationship with Simon drove her to madness, deepening the mystery surrounding her radiant exterior.

Marie, fragile and ardent, refuses to fully explain the attic's purpose and then vanishes into the night to check into another hotel. Julien calls Marie's former boss, who directs him to Delphine, further muddying the timeline and motives.

Marie returns to the scene of her and Simon's past—the letting agent's room that eerily mirrors Julien's attic—and the truth sharpens: her self-destructive plan is entwined with Adrienne’s memory, and Adrienne’s presence continues to haunt the couple.

Marie leads Julien downstairs to the attic where a noose awaits. They spiral into a dangerous, intimate dance as memory, fear, and love collide.

They make love again, but Marie warns Julien that if he continues, he will begin to forget her. Julien pleads for her presence to endure. In a desperate moment, he considers ending his life with a knife, but Marie intervenes.

When Madame X arrives to reclaim her letter, she burns it, lifting Adrienne’s ghost from the room and freeing the living from its grip—at least for the moment. The act shifts the mood from menace to fragile relief.

Marie, moved to tears, tells Julien that she is the one he loved. She tests his trust with a quiet, hopeful smile: give her a little time.