Les Mots pour le Dire plot
Marie has a very difficult time with her mother, which stems from her childhood in Algeria. The mother, Eliane, has lost a child before Marie was born and hates her husband, whose tuberculosis may have been to blame for the death. That hatred never passed and Marie grew up in a household full of tensions. As both women grow older, Marie marries and has children, while her mother sinks further into anger, frustration and isolated despair. She takes her emotions out on her daughter and doesn't see Marie's attempts to make her life better.