Claude Chabrol - Une affaire de femmes (1988)

In the occupied France in the World War II, the housewife and aspirant singer Marie Latour is a young woman that raises her two children alone with many financial difficulties. Her husband, Paul Latour, was made prisoner by the Germans and sent to Germany. When her next-door neighbor gets pregnant, she performs an abortion and receives a record player as a gift. Meanwhile, Paul returns too weak to find a steady job. Marie befriends the prostitute Lulu and learns that she can make money performing abortions and renting her room for prostitutes. Her life improves, she buys foods and clothes for her children and she, and has singing lessons with a teacher, but she refuses to have sex with Paul since she is in a loveless marriage. When she meets Lulu's client Lucien, who is a collaborationist crane operator, he becomes her lover. One afternoon, she brings Lucien and has sex with him in her bed. Paul arrives earlier and sees them on the bed. Humiliated, he denounces Marie to the chief of police, she is arrested and sent to Paris to be judged. What will happen to her?