Concha is a dancer in a cabaret for sailors and she has a “man”. When this man gets a good thrashing she finds herself unprotected and decides to go off with a barge captain she met a few days earlier. Her arrival will stir up the peaceful life onboard the barge…a porcelain woman more used to nightlife than everyday chores, she doesn’t fit in. The captain has a son and the inevitable happens, the young man falls in love with the beauty and takes off with her. Hounded by the captain’s rage, will they manage to find happiness?

Une femme a passé (A Woman Passed By) can be both linked with the “barge film” genre and with a French movie trend of the end of the 1920’s highly influenced by German expressionism.