Plot

A passionate love story set against a backdrop of sexual freedom, loosely based on the relationship between 19th-century authors Pierre Louÿs and Marie de Régnier.

Paris 1895; Pierre is a Parisian dandy and poet on the verge of fame. He and his poet friend Henri are both madly in love with Marie, the cheeky daughter of their mentor, Franco-Cuban poet José-Maria de Heredia. Although she loves Pierre, obeying her father she marries Henri to pay off her father's debt and in search of a better social position. Thereupon Pierre decides to flee to Algeria and there meets Zohar, with whom he shares a passion for erotic photography. Returning to Paris with her two years later, he finds Marie again, who confesses that he is the one she loves. They start an affair against the backdrop of Paris's erotic photography, in a cat-and-mouse game with people who involve their lives and breaking the codes set by society which will will make them one of the best-known writers and poets of 19th-century France.

Paris 1895. To pay off her father's debts, Marie de Heredia (Merlant) marries the poet Henri de Regnier (Lavernhe), but it is Pierre Louys (Schneider) whom she loves, a poet who is also an erotomaniac and a great traveller. It is with him that she will live an initiation to love and eroticism through the photographic and literary link that they invent together.

The film recounts the relationship between Marie de Régnier (1875-1963) (Marie de Hérédia) and Pierre Louÿs (1870-1925), which takes place in France around the turn of the 20th century. Louÿs and his friend Henri de Régnier both fall in love with Marie, daughter of the poet José-Maria de Heredia. Marie is a respected writer who signed her first book, "L'Inconstante," under the pseudonym Gérard d'Houville. Although she loves Pierre, she marries the wealthy Henri to help pay off her father's debt and to improve her social position. Pierre subsequently flees to Algeria where he meets Zohar, a beguiling woman with whom he starts a passionate relationship. When he returns to France, he takes Zohar with him. Marie becomes his mistress and she and Zohar both engage in erotic games with Pierre and pose nude for him. They discover themselves by transgressing the norms of the bourgeois society they live in. Marie starts to invent stories to inflame Pierre's erotic imagination. With these stories she gains power over him and discovers her sexuality and literary voice. When Pierre goes back on a trip, Marie feels a terrible emptiness and discovers she is pregnant.