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.

Is there a hidden order of things? This is one of the questions Rivette seems to be asking himself and the audience throughout the gargantuan running time of his magnum opus. Secret societies, cryptic riddles, double identities, enigmatic conspiracies… Modernism doesn’t get any better than this.