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.
The film will tell what happens to a group of characters, precisely between July 14 and August 15, 1994 in Paris. It will tell the story of three young ladies, Louise, Ninon, Ida, in the summer of 1994, their adventures in the big city. On the streets, in the gardens, in ballrooms and in libraries and lofts, deserted at the time of holidays and summer heat, Louis, Ninon and Ida proceed on mysterious paths.
An American filmmaker travels to modern day Berlin to make a film based on a real-life incident from 1942 in which 13 Jewish prisoners from a concentration camp were promised freedom if they appeared in a German propaganda film. Unfortunately, the Germans lied. The psychological process undergone by the modern filmmaker while shooting the story provides the basis of this arty and challenging film.
Dominican friar Etienne de Bourbon visits a 13th-century French village in search of heretics for the Inquisition. Despite the opposition of the local priest and the indifference of the villagers, he finds a seemingly perfect suspect: a young woman who lives in a forest outside the village and cures people with herbs and folk remedies. In the process, he discovers the cult of the greyhound "Saint" Guinefort, and confronts his own troubled past.
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
