It is shot entirely in or from a hotel room, in which Jules (Jean-Paul Belmondo) gives his former girlfriend Charlotte (Anne Collette) a seemingly endless and self-indulgent tirade on her faults and his tribulations.

Charlotte (Anne Collette) exits a sports car in front of a Parisian apartment building and tells her boyfriend (Gérard Blain) to wait for her.

Upstairs, licking an ice cream cone, she enters the apartment of her former boyfriend Jules (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who begins reproaching her in a long and comically insulting monologue for ending their relationship.

In 1957, Jean-Luc Godard, with the help of Éric Rohmer, began devising a series of short films centered on two young women named Charlotte and Veronique.

[4] Godard had previously directed a shot documentary, Operation beton, and a short narrative film, Une femme coquette, both in 1955.

[7] Godard first cast his then girlfriend, Anne Collette, for Tous les garçons s'appellent Patrick, and she returned for his second film in the series.

[9] Brody also characterizes the film as "a self-deprecating self-portrait," with Jean's "madly romantic austerity" a reflection of Godard's own poverty and tendency of recklessly pursuing romances.

However, Brody states that Godard suppresses the film's personal elements in favor of the script's abundant allusions and references.