Marie (Anne Coesens) has been with the same man for twelve years and they have a young child. Despite a seemingly happy domestic situation she is having an existential crisis, under pressure from her husband and friends to have a second child. Keen to reclaim her body from motherhood, a chance encounter with a stranger seems to offer a way out.
Through her job as an encyclopedia a saleswoman, perhaps a metaphor for her own quest for self-knowledge, she meets a dance teacher called Bill. Strong, black, self-assured and teasingly masculine, she encounters 'otherness' in Bill in several different ways. They embark on a passionate affair that explores the dark side of sexuality. Raw and at times verging on the brutal the physical experience is intense. When she returns home bruised, love bitten and ravished she has to confront both her marriage and her desire face on.