A policeman and a serial killer play cat and mouse in an isolated mountain village in Nineteenth century France. The second film directed by the man who played the admirable lead role in Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped is a stylized and intense adaptation of a novel by Jean Giono. This police investigation in a 19th century village combines visual beauty with the rigor of the mise-en-scène—the vertigo of the criminal motivations indivisible from the refined graphics of the images.

Jules is a shepherd who lives a humble and solitary life in rural Provence. From time to time, he is visited by a lonely widow, Fine, who longs to be his wife. One day, Jules comes across an unexploded bomb lying on the ground in open countryside. After a few foolhardy attempts to set the bomb off, Jules makes a surprising discovery. It is filled with thousands of bank notes…