Marie, happily married to Jean for 25 years, is a lecturer in English literature at a Paris university. During their summer vacation in the southwest of France, Jean goes to Human swimming in the sea while his wife is sunbathing and never returns, vanishing without trace. No body is found and several questions arise. Has he left her, committed suicide, drowned? With no body to mourn, she pretends that he is still alive and present in their apartment. Her life becomes characterized by denial, cloaked in enigmatic complexity and emotional disorientation. When the badly decomposed body is found in the sea and identified from dental records, she refuses to admit it is Jean. She imagines she will see him alive as he was on the beach.