After Ann sees her partner Thomas kissing another woman, she refuses to have anything to do with him anymore. She doesn’t want to hear his explanations or excuses; she decides not only to end their long-standing relationship but to leave everything else far behind her. She sells the house and furniture, even the piano she loved, she stuffs her clothes into huge plastic sacks and takes them off to the dustbins. She simply erases her entire past, determined to begin again from scratch. The only person she trusts is her childhood friend Georges, whom she meets on that fateful night. One day, after visiting her old sick mother, Ann leaves for Italy and, on an island which she has covered on foot from one end to the other, she finds an old abandoned house above the sea. It’s called the Villa Amalia and it seems this is the place she has been looking for, which will help her to build a new life. The film was adapted from the novel by French writer Pascal Quignard which won the prestigious Prix Goncourt, about a woman who resolves to reinvent herself. Isabelle Huppert as Ann is probably the only actress capable of portraying a character like this with such conviction, under a director she has worked with on several occasions in the past.