Based on Marguerite Duras' autobiographical classic, the film tells the story of the time when the writer, shortly before the end of the war, did not know for months whether her husband, who had been arrested as a Resistance fighter, would ever return from captivity. In order to learn more about the fate of her beloved, she engages in a cat-and-mouse game with a Nazi collaborator, which is viewed with skepticism by her intellectual friends and fellow fighters.