The Sara Morton character is sick and tired of writing her stock-in-trade serial books, and wishes for inspiration for something NEW. She says so to her publisher, who wants to keep her writing them, and offers her a stay at his French villa for a rest and change of scenery.<br /><br />Sara goes to the villa. We then see several scenes of just how much she enjoys the solitude, the sun, the quiet, the food. She breathes in deeply that fresh air, so different from the London cloudy skies, nameless crowds in the subways etc. that she came from. *** The sensuality of the landscape, the climate, even the pool, put her in a frame of mind different from the bored, fatigued frame of mind she had in London.*** (This is the key to the movie). <br /><br />And, so, inspiration to write something a bit different does come: She starts writing another book, combining bits and pieces of given facts and given characters: The daughter that her publisher mentioned, appears in her manuscript as "Julie". All her attributes and behavior come from Sara's inspiration-"Julie" never actually comes to the villa. The rest is just how the book develops-and since she is an experienced writer of murder mysteries, a murder is written in too. She finishes the book, gets it published by a new publisher, takes it to her old publisher as an "I'll show you!", and this is where we see that she has never really met the daughter: A young girl with braces walks in, not recognizing Sara. That is the real-life daughter. <br /><br />One scene that is quite telling of where reality stops and her inspiration starts is that of Franck-the local waiter, cleaning leaves from the pool with the net, wearing a tiny bathing suit, before he stands over the sunbathing, sleeping "Julie". The camera goes slowly over his body and his obvious arousal, in close-up-not the way he could be seen from where Sara was standing, looking out at the pool. That is BEFORE he is shown arriving at the villa with "Julie".<br /><br />Well, the waiter is initially shown briefly serving Sara a drink in the village, and that's all he does. He doesn't work at the villa cleaning the pool-that is old Marcel's job. There is no other explanation about Franck suddenly being at the villa cleaning the pool, other than "that's how Sara wove the local waiter into her book".