In this movie, a woman is going mad, literally, with frustration. Based on a novel by Ingeborg Bachmann, Isabelle Huppert plays the distraught woman who feels that the choice between her uninspiring husband and her indifferent lover warrants ever-escalating displays of rage, distress and loss of self-control. Eventually her self-indulgence leads to her setting her now-demolished Viennese apartment on fire and burning herself alive in it while the movie score plays songs from grand opera to celebrate her dramatic departure from life.~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide