Behind Masks

In the gas-lit hush of a crumbling Riviera manor, Jeanne—ward, prize, and unwitting pawn—drifts through velvet corridors like a moth hypnotized by its own wings. Her guardian aunt, a matriarch with a smile sharp enough to slice bonds and banknotes alike, has already sold the girl’s future to a septuagenarian whose coffers clang louder than his pulse. What Jeanne cannot hear is the metallic rustle of marked cards being shuffled in the salon below, where chandeliers drip false gold over a rigged bridge table. That night the house swells with perfumed sharks: dowagers nursing grudges like lapdogs, diplomats fingering monocles that double as mirrors to their hollowness, and a lone young millionaire whose fortune is the final jewel the aunt intends to pocket. Two chance happenings detonate the plot: Jeanne locks eyes with the mark across the green baize—an electric jolt that liquefies her inherited obedience—and a hidden servant, long mute, finally whispers the atrocity of her parents’ death, proving the aunt’s signature on their ruin. From that vertiginous instant, the film becomes a staccato fever of swapped decks, torn marriage contracts, moonlit escapes across terraced gardens, and a final confrontation inside a mirrored boudoir where every reflection indicts the viewer for voyeurism.