Léa Pool's La Demoiselle sauvage (1991)

 

This film is based on a story of the same name in a book (of the same name) of short stories by Swiss writer S. Corinna Bille, which won the Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle in 1975. Marianne (Patricia Tulasne) has been through a bungled suicide attempt after an obviously traumatic experience. Élysée (Matthias Habich) helps her after she's fallen down a hill of rubble, and nurses her to a kind of fragile health in a rough hut nearby: this is in the mountains in Switzerland close to the Italian border.

It becomes evident from her strange nervous and suspicious behaviour that she's been through a hellish ordeal. And that it's a police matter, although Élysée – who's an engineer and married with two children but rarely sees his wife because of their different patterns of work, has no intention of handing her over to the law and keeps her in the hut. Almost inevitably the relationship becomes sexual, but not intensely so on the part of Marianne.

In time Élysée discovered that 'Marianne' is wanted for murder: she has killed her violent, abusive partner. He goes to see a (female) lawyer about it and tries to assure 'Marianne' that she will get off with a light sentence. She, however, is terrified of spending time in prison. She completes the action she bungled in the beginning.