The trapper treats Luc as a cross between prisoner/slave and sex object. Before getting around to sex, Luc is made to bathe the trapper, wear a collar and act as a sort of pet. Meanwhile, Alice is left for days to rot in the basement without food or water.
Throughout, we see flashbacks of events leading to the initial murder. Luc is a virgin, and Alice has been a willing, but unsuccessful girlfriend. She had not been able to rouse him to hardness. After seeing the trapper bring Luc to climax, and after days in confinement, Alice has a delirious dream. In it, the dead classmate is alive with the trapper in the woods. As they caress, Alice hides behind a tree to secretly watch them and masturbates to the site.
As Alice nears death by dehydration, the trapper allows the teens to escape. Almost immediately, the police spot them and chase them down for the murder of the classmate. Luc's foot gets caught in one of the trapper's sets (nice metaphor), and he urges Alice to proceed without him. Alice does, but eventually has no place to run, turns on the cops, and is shot to death.
Meanwhile, the police capture Luc, and throw him in a police van. Before it drives away, he sees the police haul in the trapper, and beat him -- kicking him even after he is down on the ground. Luc shouts through the wired glass of the van window to let the trapper go -- he didn't do anything.
There is a nice repetition in the lament that 1st the kids should be let go, then that the trapper should. By the end of the film, Luc has stopped protesting his own plight, and cares that the trapper not be punished. By all laws, the trapper truly *should* be punished, but the trapper was the method through which Luc was punished for his own crimes, and Luc seemed to understand that concept, and be charitable about not punishing his tormentor for performing the thankless task.
At the movie's end, we don't know what will happen to the trapper, but it surely won't be pleasant. We expect Luc will go to prison with a myriad of issues haunting him. Luc's fate contrasts nicely with that of Alice, as Alice was thoughtless, understood nothing and was hastily dispatched without further thought.
Francois Ozon (Sitcom, See the Sea) also directed the Fassbinder-scripted
"Water Drops on Burning Rocks".