The former famous painter Frenhofer lives quietly with his wife on a countryside residence in the French Provence. When the young artist Nicolas visits him with his girlfriend Marianne, Frenhofer decides to start again the work on a painting he long ago stopped: La Belle Noiseuse. And he wants Marianne as model.
We follow 24 hours in the life of a being moving from life to life like a cold and solitary assassin moving from hit to hit. In each of these interwoven lives, the being possesses an entirely distinct identity: sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes youthful, sometimes old. By turns murderer, beggar, company chairman, monstrous creature, worker, family man.
Julien is a clockmaker with destructive impulses who decides to blackmail Madame X, a rich, attractive woman who traffics in stolen antiques. What he doesn’t know is that she has an even more dangerous secret that leads him to Marie, with whom he had fallen in love a year earlier.
Nicholas is the eldest son of a wealthy suburban family, whose businesswoman mother makes deals from a helicopter and has an affair with her business partner. His cheerful, alcoholic father, on the other hand, is reduced to a prisoner in his room with his devoted dog and electric train set. Unbeknownst to his parents, Nicholas works as a window cleaner and dish washer in a Parisian cafe. He is also in love with the daughter of another cafe's owner, who, however, has an abusive boyfriend. One night, Nicholas sneaks a few drunken drifters into his family wine cellar and his father unexpectedly takes a liking to the stranger.
Anna, Joyce, Claude and Lucia are all students under the tutelage of Constance Dumas, a renowned film instructor. Lucia moves in with the other girls. Soon after, she is attacked on the street outside her home and saved by a mysterious stranger.
Jeanne d'Arc has succeeded in lifting the siege on Orléans and Charles VII has been ordained King of France. However, she is injured in her failed attempt to take Paris, weakening her position at court. When she is finally captured and put on trial, she finds both her life and the sanctity of her body at stake.
Convinced that only she can lead France to victory against the invading English, Jeanne d'Arc leaves her childhood home to plead Charles, heir to the French throne, to allow her to guide his troops on the battlefield.
After biologist Sylvie discovers her brother Paul trying to steal a gun from her lab, he explains that he wishes to avenge the death of their father whom he suspects died at the hands of his business partner.
A librarian, a gangster's ex-lover and a woman who has recovered from a coma spend an eye-opening summer in Paris.
Vincent lives in a village, along the Rhône. Every morning he goes to the factory to work, and in the evening he takes care of his family. One day, he decides to go on a trip with the money given by his father.
A young man enters a brothel and sees a staged narration of a Chinese folk tale concerning a female pirate.
At a Spanish cloister, a celebrated French general of the Napoleonic Wars recognizes the voice of one of the nuns and recalls how, five years ago, she was the Duchess of Langeais, and he her most persistent suitor.
More than just an abbreviated form of "La Belle Noiseuse", Rivette re-cut his footage with some important differences in point of view - this one being more from Marianne's point of view
When he loses his position as a powerful government minister, Vincent is dropped by his pretty mistress and must begin life anew, without the privileges of power. As he gradually becomes acquainted with milieus which he d either forgotten or never known and a host of sometimes eccentric, often remarkable everyday people, Vincent really begins to start living again.
This European existential drama utilizes complex symbols inspired by abstract psychological theories to explore the effects and reasons behind a young classical actor's decision to stop talking. No one knows why Massimo has vowed to stop talking. Other than speaking dialog from classical plays, Massimo refuses to say a single word. His father, a classic-literature professor believes it reflects to a disappointing love affair. His new girlfriend thinks Massimo is rebelling against his mother, a poet. A director learns of Massimo and commissions his mother to write a play about him. Though Massimo plays himself in the play, and does speak, he returns to silence when the play is finished.
A young architect, Luca Fabiani, arrives in Venice to restore an ancient building in the Jewish ghetto. Here he discovers that on the top floor there is an apartment still inhabited by Elio Sorani, an elderly writer who has been living in seclusion for years, immersed in his memories. Elio is often visited by Giulia, a young woman who exchanges furtive and quick conversations with him. Giulia has an art gallery, where she meets with the man she is having an affair with, the Russian Sacha, an art critic who has now become a mediator of paintings between Italy and Russia. After overcoming an initial moment of mistrust, Luca and Elio become friends, and Elio gives Luca the manuscript of an unpublished novel, which Luca believes will enable him to reconstruct the writer's past.
A man returns to visit his native Sicily after living in New York for a long time. He learns about the Sicilian way of life from stylized conversations with an orange picker, his fellow train passengers, his mother, and a knife-sharpener.
An ice-cream seller lusts after the female employees in his shop.
A fearless Antigone, refusing to allow the dishonored body of her murdered brother Polynices to be devoured by vultures and dogs, defies the Thebian tyrant Creon by burying him.
A couple goes on a hike in the woods, and the woman refuses to return.
