Adapted from Ruth Rendell's classic best seller, Claude Chabrol earns his 'French Hitchcock' tag with one of his most shocking and unforgettable films. Sophie, an introverted and illiterate young woman, is hired as a maid by the bourgeois Lelievre family - Catherine (Jacqueline Bisset), Georges and their children - to work on the manor they live in the countryside of France. They are generous and kind to Sophie, but their genuine attempts to help her are taken as offensive by the young girl. In the meantime, Sophie befriends the postmistress Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert) who has a disturbed history and manipulates the maid against the Lelievres. "France's master of suspense, Claude Chabrol, relishes every malevolent, icily controlled shot of this perfectly constructed thriller" - Cath Clarke, The Guardian