A new batch of female convicts arrive in an austere women's prison. These include
Nicole, who murdered her own child, and who is forced to in solitary confinement for her
own safety. Other women at the prison have their own problems. Nelly, who
is studying for a degree, becomes the victim of malicious plot involving drugs, whilst
another woman, Marthe, is victimised because of her privileged relationship with the prison's
governor, Madame Dessombes.
Science-fiction came into its own in B-movies of the 1950s, but it remains a respected and popular genre, bursting into the mainstream in the late 1970s.
It was American film noir and pulp fiction that kick-started the craze for thrillers in 1950s France and made it one of the most popular and enduring genres.
Franz Kafka's letters to his fiancée Felice Bauer not only reveal a soul in torment; they also give us a harrowing self-portrait of a man appalled by his own existence.