A portrait of despair. A couple and their three children dwell in the dismal atmosphere of a dilapidated cabin. The mother is mentally handicapped; the father, submissive but hostile, is reduced to passivity. In her world of fantasy the mother dreams of the coming of a "last snow," her signal to return to the "promised land." But the snow never comes. Instead, she leaves home without explanation and with no place to go. Her children, in eerie silence, watch their father destroy the cabin with his hatchet. (Film in French, useful for teaching French as a Second Language.)