When her mother dies, her filmmaker daughter Anne (Sylvie Testud, LOURDES) discovers in her "suitcase of secrets" photographs from just after the war from which she tries to reconstruct a time when her parents were happy (they separated six years after her birth). Ukranian Jewish refugees Michel Korsky (Benoît Magimel, THE FLOWER OF EVIL) and Lena (Mélanie Thierry, THE LEGEND OF 1900) return to Paris to discover his parents and siblings gone and no record of them on any lists. They simultaneously seek membership in the local communist party and French citizenship for themselves and unborn daughter Tania, through which Michel is able to acquire a shop for his tailoring business. When Michel's younger brother Jean (Nicolas Duvauchelle, WHITE MATERIAL) shows up out of nowhere, he is overjoyed to discover one of his family is still alive and welcomes him into his home and business - along with comrade - Sacha (Clément Sibony, DEEP IN THE WOODS) who has no qualifications but survived Auschwitz - despite his suspicions that Jean is a deserter. Cracks start to appear in what Lena describes to Jean as a "sham marriage" (since total stranger Michel rescued her from the gas chamber by marrying her) as her friend Madeleine (Clotilde Hesme, MYSTERIES OF LISBON) - who has been cuckolding her husband Maurice (Denis Podalydès, CACHÉ [HIDDEN]) with a younger party member (Marc Ruchmann, 5X2) - provides her with a copy of "Madame Bovary" and Jean provides a listening ear as well as an adventurous alternative to Michel's ideal of hearth and home. The brothers' differing political views have already set them at odds, but Lena finds herself torn between them when Michel learns from the police that Jean is wanted for the murder of a German misidentified as a Nazi officer and Jean must go on the run after taking out the intended target. Back in the present, Anne may never find out what became of Jean as her father (Magimel in old age make-up) is dying and her older sister Tania (Julie Ferrier, MICMACS) is unwilling to "stir up shit".

"When parents disappear, they leave us some old photos, and unanswered questions. We grow up unaware." Based loosely on the story of director Diane Kurys' (ENTRE NOUS) own parents who met in a concentration camp, FOR A WOMAN is a grand love story, or even a reworking of "Madame Bovary", so much as a look at how feelings change over time as people grow (as well as as how even long-festering emotional wounds can be easily and suddenly forgiven). Politically-naive Lena's lust for Jean seems shallow however dull Michel seems in comparison but it can also be seen as representative of her recognition and assertion of her desires (not all sexual) following a long period in which survival was the only goal. The overly simplistic perspective can also be explained by way of Anne's imagining of what her parents were like before she was born or "a life you're making up" - as her sister describes it - in order to conceive of a time when her estranged parents would have been in love (even if it turns out that it was never mutual).