Adultery

Linda, a journalist in her thirties, lives in Geneva with her wealthy husband, who manages a large investment fund, and their two children. By all outward measures, her life is ideal: She has a respected journalism career, financial security, and a loving family. Yet she dreads each new morning. Her existential unease intensified after she interviewed a writer who declared he preferred to live passionately rather than happily, forcing Linda to confront the emptiness beneath her comfortable routine. She has insomnia, a dwindling sex life, and a paralyzing fear that her days will either change without warning or remain the same forever.

Linda recognizes her symptoms during a lunch with a friend who has been treated for depression. The friend describes apathy, pretending to function, and losing interest in everything, all of which mirror Linda's inner state. Linda refuses to accept the label, though she privately acknowledges she may be sliding toward it.

A professional assignment becomes a turning point. Linda interviews Jacob König, a politician running for the Council of States, Switzerland's upper parliamentary chamber, who is also her ex-boyfriend from high school. The interview is routine, but afterward Jacob locks the door and kisses her. She reciprocates and performs oral sex on him. That evening, intensely aroused by the transgression, she initiates passionate lovemaking with her husband. She dismisses the encounter as a midlife crisis that will pass.

It does not pass. Over a series of lunches, Linda and Jacob grow closer. He asks her bluntly whether she is happy, a question no one else has ever posed. When Jacob admits that he, too, is deeply unhappy despite his success, Linda falls in love with him again. Her editor tells her Jacob may be the target of a blackmail scheme involving a Nigerian metallurgical company and instructs Linda to cultivate him as a source. At their next meeting, in the Parc des Eaux-Vives, the journalistic angle collapses: Jacob explains the affair was consensual, his wife Marianne already knows, and he has set a trap for the blackmailers. Linda impulsively kisses him. A surge of euphoria gives way to their shared sadness, and they part as strangers.

Shaken, Linda confides in her husband over dinner, telling him about her persistent sadness and insomnia while omitting any mention of Jacob. He responds with patience, suggesting they exercise more and travel together. On a family outing to Nyon, a small town on Lake Geneva, Linda spots Jacob's campaign billboard while running and accelerates, experiencing a brief rush of freedom before returning to embrace her family.

At the election results party, Jacob wins a seat on the Council of States. Linda meets Marianne König, Jacob's wife, an assistant professor of philosophy and heiress to a pharmaceutical fortune. Marianne reveals she herself leaked Jacob's affair to the press, transforming a potential scandal into a show of integrity. Before parting, she delivers a veiled warning, making clear she knows about Linda's interest in Jacob.

Linda spirals into obsession. When Jacob ignores her calls, she lies to reach him, claiming someone photographed their kiss. She resolves to destroy Marianne out of jealousy, purchasing 30 grams of cocaine from a dealer near the Mont Blanc Bridge with plans to plant the drugs in Marianne's university desk. That night, she reads her children a fable about porcupines who must choose between freezing alone or huddling together and enduring one another's quills, a parable about the tension between intimacy and pain.

Linda meets Jacob at a golf club and delivers a vulnerable monologue about melancholy and connection. Jacob listens, takes her hand, and suggests she try marriage counseling. Devastated, Linda drives to the castle where Mary Shelley was inspired to write Frankenstein and compares herself to Victor Frankenstein: someone who tried to animate something lifeless and created only destruction. Her plan to frame Marianne also fails when Linda infiltrates the university campus in disguise and discovers the desk is a simple table with no drawers.

Linda visits three psychiatrists, none of whom satisfies her, though the third inadvertently gives her an idea by mentioning shamans. She meets a Cuban shaman in Veyrier, a village outside Geneva, who tells her the light in her soul is greater than the darkness and advises her to follow her impulses to their conclusion rather than stopping halfway.

After weeks of silence, Jacob invites Linda for coffee. At a café on the French border, he confesses he loves her. They consummate the affair at a Geneva hotel, beginning a pattern of regular clandestine meetings. Linda discovers the transgression has awakened a wild, unfamiliar side of herself that she both fears and craves.

The crisis comes to a head at a dinner with both couples after a TV reception. Marianne steers the conversation toward jealousy, making pointed insinuations. Linda's husband unknowingly defuses the tension by revealing he grew up surrounded by jealousy and vowed never to practice it, but Linda loses composure, aggressively confronting Marianne and declaring she could be having an affair with Jacob. Jacob texts the next morning warning that Marianne, who previously had no proof, is now certain.

Linda breaks down. She sobs in her car, wanders the streets, and contemplates confession. That evening, her husband initiates a fireside conversation. Without accusing her, he speaks about the nature of love and concludes that his love is unconditional: If she ever needs to leave to find happiness, she is free to go. Linda realizes he likely knows or suspects the truth but has chosen love over confrontation.

Linda calls Jacob's office and insists on a final meeting. She arrives, silences his protests with a kiss, and they have sex on his office sofa. Afterward, Linda tells him it is over. The suffering of the past week brought her to the edge, she explains, but her husband's unconditional love and her own restored self-respect showed her the way back. She leaves the cocaine on his desk, telling him to discard it, and walks out. On the sidewalk, she calls her husband to say she wants to spend New Year's Eve at home with the children.

The couple travels to Interlaken, a Swiss mountain town where they first stayed as young lovers. Linda's husband drinks heavily and confesses his own hidden despair: He dreamed of selling everything, buying a boat, and sailing the world but abandoned the dream for stability. For the first time, Linda finds herself in the role of protector. Her husband impulsively signs them both up for paragliding. Despite her terror, Linda agrees on the condition they go immediately, before she can overthink it. Once airborne, she experiences a mystical transformation: Following an eagle, she feels her consciousness expand to encompass the mountains, lakes, and sky, losing all sense of self. Upon landing, she weeps uncontrollably, not from fear but from overwhelming joy.

On New Year's Eve, Linda stands at her window contemplating the past year. She concludes that the only force capable of truly changing her was love. She thinks fondly of Jacob and Marianne, hoping the experience brought them closer as well. When snow begins to fall, the first of the season, she gathers her husband and children to celebrate together, certain the year ahead will be excellent.