Under the Sand 2001

Marie, an esteemed English professor at a university in Paris, has spent 25 blissful years married to her husband, Jean. Their life together takes them to a family-owned house in the beautiful Landes, where one fateful day, while Marie enjoys the sun, Jean goes for a swim—but he never returns. The tragic incident leaves no witnesses, and his body remains missing, leaving Marie grappling with the heavy uncertainty of his fate. It’s unclear whether he has drowned or perhaps taken his own life.

Despite the grim circumstances, Marie adamantly refuses to accept her husband’s death. After returning to Paris, she begins to experience strange visions of Jean, suggesting that he might still be with her, perhaps as an apparition. In her struggle to cope with this loss, she embarks on a secret affair, all the while denying the truth about Jean’s disappearance.

However, her fragile mental state comes under scrutiny when the police from Landes reach out with news that a body has been recovered from a fisherman’s net. Concerned for her wellbeing, her friends attempt to support her, but Marie’s heart remains steadfast, unable to love anyone else as she loved Jean. During a visit to her mother-in-law, who resides in a nursing home, she is met with rejection when expressing the possibility of Jean’s suicide. Instead, her mother-in-law crudely suggests that Jean left her due to boredom and her inability to bear children.

Eventually, Marie feels compelled to return to Landes to confront the local authorities about Jean’s disappearance. There, she learns that he likely drowned as he struggled against the undertow. However, identification proves challenging, as the body discovered shows significant signs of decay. A genetic test indicates a 90% match with his mother, and dental records seem to align, yet they are thwarted by the absence of skeletal fractures for identification purposes.

Determined to face the truth, Marie insists on viewing the body and is met with horror. A wristwatch found on the corpse seems to align with her description of Jean’s, yet she vehemently denies its ownership. Haunted by her memories, she returns to the beach where he vanished, and in a surreal moment, she believes she sees a figure in the distance resembling Jean. In a desperate act fueled by love and grief, she runs towards what she hopes to be him, struggling to grasp onto the past amid the uncertainty of her present.