La Lune dans le caniveau, according to AllMovie, "received uneven reviews on its initial release".

[3][4] Two women: Loretta (Nastassja Kinski), a wealthy amateur photographer who prowls the docks in her '60s Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder looking for handsome men, and Bella (Victoria Abril), a poor but beautiful woman who is probably a prostitute, share affections for a dock worker named Gerard (played by Gérard Depardieu).

In the mid-1980s it was often screened as a fashionable late night art movie for esoteric clubs such as the Edinburgh Academy Cinema Society.

[citation needed] In the American DVD release director Jean-Jacques Beineix reveals that after the expanded 3 hour DVD version director's cut of Betty Blue was released he approached Gaumont, the studio that produced the film, about doing the same with The Moon in the Gutter.

The excuse was that accountants had reasoned that the film was a financial liability with little future value that had severely damaged Gaumont's reputation.