Constructed as a musical piece, it has a prologue followed by three movements, each of which focuses on one of the three key characters and their interactions with the others, and ends with a coda.

She lands a manual job on a local paper run by an old friend, perhaps an old lover, in a country town and gets a room on a farm in return for helping with the cattle.

Leaving in fury, after again expressing his alienation with inappropriate sexual innuendo, he meets Denise in a bar, where the two quarrel and part.

After her night with Paul, in which she mechanically goes through the motions while mentally planning her next day, she is waylaid by a pimp who gives her a spanking to remind her that there is no independence in a commercial world and he must have 50% of her earnings.

On returning to the apartment she shares with some other women, who all seem to detest her, her younger sister arrives unexpectedly and asks Isabelle for money because her lover and all his associates have just been jailed for robbing a bank.

While continuing to service a variety of clients with different needs, sometimes inventive (one businessman choreographs a foursome while sitting at his desk), and all the while with her mind elsewhere, she is also searching for an apartment of her own.

An old school friend she meets in a hotel corridor, probably a dealer and maybe a prostitute as well, offers her a lucrative opportunity to be a courier, but the boss of the operation finds Isabelle too dangerously naive.

As the two walk off, they pass a small orchestra set up in a garage yard that is playing the theme music which has echoed through the film.

Godard promoted what he referred to as his "second first film" heavily in the United States, notably appearing on two episodes of The Dick Cavett Show.

In his initial proposal for the film, a 20 minute video known as Scénario de Sauve Qui Peut (la vie) (included as a supplement on the Criterion Collection DVD), Godard suggested a guest appearance by Werner Herzog that is not in the finished film, including a still photo that is apparently of Herzog doing a backflip.

Poet and author Charles Bukowski is credited with the English subtitles for the American release though he doesn't speak French.