Le piège d'Issoudun

One autumn morning in a Montreal suburb, Esther drowns her two young children, then unsuccessfully tries to kill herself. In a state of shock, she gets in her car and hits the freeway, hoping to kill herself in a car accident. Before leaving the village of Issoudun, she's stopped by a police officer who realizes that something's wrong.

He gets her to agree to let him take her home, and a bond develops between the officer who has children but doesn't have visitation rights and Esther, a married nuclear engineer who has cracked under life's pressures. When they arrive at her house, he finds the children's corpses and has to make a difficult decision.