Paula Nelson, a hard boiled detective, goes to Atlantic City to meet her lover. Once there, she learns that he is dead and decides to investigate. In her hotel room, she kills a man whose body is later found in the apartment of writer David Goodis. Paula will soon be arrested and interrogated.

In this self-conscious and colourful film noir, Jean-Luc Godard delivers both the most extreme and exuberant expression of his bombastic pop-art filmmaking, and an indication of his turn to leftist politics. His last film with Anna Karina, featuring an unforgettable cameo from Marianne Faithfull.