Secrets, rumors and betrayals surround the upcoming marriage between a young dissolute man and virtuous woman of the French aristocracy.

A young beautiful teacher is transfered to a remote island's school, where her colleague (also the principal of the school) falls in love with her. This banned love provokes the jealousy of the principal's wife and makes her seek revenge.

Marie, a theoretical physicist, searches in island seclusion for an understanding of the universal "unattainable." The natural world inexorably and wordlessly folds in around her even as she struggles to understand it through formal means.