A sophisticated and self-assured woman from Paris takes a position with a decadent family on a pre-WWII Normandy estate and finds herself in the middle of a hotbed of hypocrisy and perversion.

After the death of her mother, young Tristana (Catherine Deneuve) goes to live with her guardian, Don Lope, an older man who eventually breaks through his façade of respectability and seduces her. She repays him a hundred fold, preying on his jealousy and taunting him with perverse whimsies.