Anne, a mother of two and an investigative journalist for Elle magazine, is writing an article about university student prostitution. Her meetings with two fiercely independent young women are profound and unsettling, moving her to question her most intimate convictions about money, family and sex.

Juliette Binoche gives one of her most fearless performances in this provocative study of sexual repression, prostitution, and female sexuality. In the grand (and risky) arthouse tradition of Belle de Jour, Elles shows a woman confronting the shallowness and hypocrisy of middle-class sexual mores.