A young, unscrupulous director hires an actress and uses the story she tells him of her life to write his screenplay, but fires her and entrusts the leading role to someone else.

Five short stories with contemporary settings. In New York, people are indifferent to derelicts sleeping on sidewalks, to a woman's assault in front of an apartment building, and to a couple injured in a car crash. A man, stripped of his identity, dies in bed with actors expressing his agony. A cheerful, innocent young man walking a city street in a time of war pays a price for this innocence. A couple talks about cinema while it watches another couple talk of love and truth on the eve of one character's return to Cuba. Striking students take over a university classroom; an argument follows about revolution or incremental change.

Godard dissects movie romance as row intellectuals watch an Italian-speaking man and his French-speaking partner talk about love.