The widow Barny lives in Nazi-occupied France, looking after her daughter in a small village. When the Germans arrive, she decides to baptize her and chooses priest Léon Morin to do so; after spending some time with him and converting to Catholicism, she starts feeling an unrequited desire for Léon.

The provinces prove to be a ripe setting for emotions seething under their cool surface in Jean-Pierre Melville’s provocative tale of religion—filled with sexual tension and repression. With Emmanuelle Riva, and Jean-Paul Belmondo as a handsome priest during WWII who all the women are besotted with!