THRILLER: A CRUEL PICTURE

A quiet girl, Madeleine, is sexually abused as a child, and the trauma makes her mute. Years later, while living on her parents' farm as a teenager, Madeleine misses the bus into town, and accepts a ride from a pimp named Tony. Tony takes the naive Madeleine out for dinner before bringing her back to his home, where he incapacitates her and repeatedly injects her with heroin, causing her to become addicted as a means of forcing her into prostitution.

To hide the fact that Madeleine was kidnapped, Tony writes hateful letters to her parents, signing them with Madeleine's name. Her parents become so distraught over their daughter's apparent betrayal that they commit suicide. When Madeleine initially refuses to have sex with a client, Tony beats her before slicing her eyeball with a scalpel. Now, donning an eyepatch over her maimed eye, Madeleine is subjected to a never-ending series of demoralizing sexual encounters with both male and female clients. Defeated by the state of her life, Madeleine is inspired by one of Tony's other prostitutes, Sally, to create an escape plan for herself.

Madeleine begins covertly stashing some of her earnings, and takes lessons in rally driving, field shooting, and different forms of martial arts, all unbeknownst to Tony. One day, Tony suddenly states that her colleague, Sally, has left the job for Beirut, however Madeleine quickly discovers that Sally's bed is still soaked and dripping with blood, and thus understands that she didn't abscond but instead has been murdered. Finally at her breaking point, the protagonist plans a revenge on Tony and his clientele.

Using the money she has stashed away, Madeleine purchases a car and a supply of heroin, breaks into the gun instructor's shed and steals a variety of weapons—including a sawed-off shotgun—preparing the attacks on her abusers. Shortly, Madeleine begins to dispatch the clients who have wronged her, first stalking one of the men, and shooting him to death with her shotgun on his front doorstep. Next, Madeleine locates another john dining at a restaurant with one of Madeleine's female clients, who regularly physically abused her, and shoots them both to death. While on a search for a next batch of heroin, she unsuspectedly falls into Tony's planned misdirection. Madeleine travels to a warehouse in a dock area where she finds two henchman Tony has tasked with killing her, but instead shoots and kills them both. Police arrive at the warehouse and find Madeleine seated with her shotgun. When they attempt to arrest her, she uses her martial arts training to incapacitate both officers and break free.

Madeleine absconds with the police car, and drives off to a rural fishing village, causing a series of reckless and fiery car accidents in her wake. In the village she is ambushed by Tony, whom she tries to shoot, however he luckily escapes due to a traffic blockage. At last, Madeleine writes Tony a post letter where she proposes a decisive duel to end the feud. She arrives at the place first and sets up a wired flare and later strolls and waits along a stone wall. Tony arrives and feigns sympathy, pretending he will reason with her. At his insistence, Madeleine puts down her shotgun, after which Tony threatens to shoot her with a pistol; before he can, however, she triggers a booby trap to distract him, and shoots him in both knees, incapacitating him. She proceeds to bind him with rope, and drags him to a meadow using a horse. There, she buries his body with stones, leaving only his head above ground, and ties a rope around his neck, which she tethers to the horse. Madeleine sits calmly and watches as Tony is strangled to death. Once he dies, she drives away in the police car.