Julien Vercel, an estate agent, is suspected of murdering his wife’s lover. All clues point to him especially when his wife is also found dead. As Vercel is hidden in his office, Barbara Becker, his secretary, investigates these suspicious murders.

Truffaut’s last film, made before his premature death at 52, is a vibrant homage to Hitchcock’s cinema, for whom he held a well-known and long-lasting admiration. This murder mystery with a love/hate relationship at its heart stars a bewildered Jean-Louis Trintignant and an alluring Fanny Ardant.