Les yeux jaunes des crocodiles (2014)

Josephine and Iris are two sisters in their forties. Josephine, known as “Jo,” is a researcher at the CNRS and a historian specializing in medieval history. Her mother looks down on her and has never believed in her. Introverted and without a social life, Josephine devotes herself mostly to her research. Her unemployed husband eventually leaves her for his mistress, yet has no qualms about leaving her with his debts. She struggles to raise her two daughters, the older of whom, Hortense, treats her in a demeaning and cruel way, seeing her as a failure and idealizing her father, unaware of his behavior. Iris, Josephine’s sister, is a beautiful, blonde Parisian bourgeois woman and their mother’s favorite. A lawyer’s wife, she is idle, frivolous, and exuberant, and is married to a wealthy man she has never loved for himself, only for the comfortable life he provides. To make herself seem more important than she is, Iris announces at a dinner that she is writing a novel about the story of a woman in the Middle Ages—a lie inspired by her sister’s thesis. But she soon finds herself at a dead end when a publisher takes an interest in her supposed literary work. That is when she begs her sister Josephine to write the novel for her, promising to give her all the money from sales so she can get out of debt, in exchange for the prestige of being credited as the author. Josephine reluctantly agrees. When the novel comes out, the press praises it, it becomes a phenomenal hit with the public, and within a few months it is a bestseller. Relations between the sisters become more complicated, and the deception begins to come to light within the family. Against a backdrop of marital instability across the generations, the lives of these women—marked by heartbreak, mutual contempt, and jealousy—will undergo a transformation until they find a natural balance. But will Iris be exposed?