When Briony Tallis, 13 years old and an aspiring writer, sees her older sister Cecilia and Robbie Turner at the fountain in front of the family estate she misinterprets what is happening thus setting into motion a series of misunderstandings and a childish pique that will have lasting repercussions for all of them. Robbie is the son of a family servant toward whom the family has always been kind. They paid for his time at Cambridge and now he plans on going to medical school. After the fountain incident, Briony reads a letter intended for Cecilia and concludes that Robbie is a deviant. When her cousin Lola is raped, she tells the police that it was Robbie she saw committing the deed when in fact it was a visitor to the estate.

The small English town of Redcar stood in for the French city of Dunkirk.

Cecilia Tallis:
I love you. I'll wait for you. Come back. Come back to me.

Anachronisms: In the section of the movie set in 1935, there is a scene where Robbie is daydreaming and the image of a four engined bomber crosses the screen. The plane is a Short's Stirling, which entered service in 1939.

Written by Claude Debussy
Performed by Gordon Thompson
Courtesy of Sanctuary Records Group Ltd