This is not a movie about songs or innocence. The movie displays a number of disturbing human qualities which persist into our modern life. It is set in 1877 but lots of the issues seem familiar.
The movie opens with rising tensions in the household of a bourgeois architect, Julien, and his young wife, Charlotte. She has had a baby, having become pregnant on her honeymoon, and she is decidely conglicts on the issue of mother hood. She wants nothing to do with it, and he wants a boy, so they agree on this one child not satisfying their immediate desires. As is fashionable for the time, they hire a young peasant girl, Angele-Marie, as a wet nurse for their newborn daughter. That whole process is portrayed as highly sexualized in the movie--Julien goes to a house for unwed mothers, half of them appearing to him bare breasted, and he choses the woman who will feed his child--after tasting her breast milk, and watching it being coaxed out of her breast. Really? That is how it was done?
The mood in their household is strained. In Julien's absence, Charlotte and Angele-Marie discover that they have more in common than either woman expected. Charlotte is bored and lonely and she allows a relationship to develop between herself and the wet nurse. What she doesn't perceive is how destructive the relationship is for Angele-Marie. She actually thinks they are friends. She starts to fantasize about a life that she and Charlotte and their two babies could share, when in fact Charlotte has little interest in leaving her lifestyle and wants only to have her husband's full attention again. Julien makes no attempt to hide his distain for the relationship between the two women, and it isn't long before the situation threatens to turn violent. The ending is dramatic, sad, and preventable.
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