Two theatre troupes rehearse Aeschylus. A young deaf-mute wants to uncover a mysterious secret society. A young woman seduces men in order to rob them. As the characters’ paths crisscross throughout the film’s puzzle-box structure, a portrait of post-May ’68 Paris and its dashed dreams emerges.

The show must go on! We get deeper into the mysterious wonders of this impossible object, a monumental work that resists pigeonholing as much as it defies storytelling, whose plot seems to be shaped as a hidden secret. In Rivette’s words: “the film swallows everything up and finally auto-destructs”.