Subtly but entirely self-absorbed, Alexandre spends most of his days lecturing his companions on political and philosophical topics, including his opinions on contemporary films, such as The Working Class Goes to Heaven, and his memories of the May '68 protests.

He lives with his lover, Marie, who works at a dress shop and responds to his continuous apathy towards her with angry invective that masks her deep feelings for him.

Marie immediately sees through Alexandre's clumsy attempts to hide his affair, treating him with increasing fury that only subsides when they have sex.

When Marie goes on a business trip to London, Alexandre first takes Veronika to his apartment and then sleeps with another friend who had earlier expressed a desire to cheat on her husband.

This prompts Veronika to break down, delivering a lengthy monologue about how sexually active women are perceived as "whores" and rejecting some of her "liberated" political beliefs.

He told a reporter from Le Nouvel Observateur "If I knew what it was that I wanted, I wouldn't wake up in the morning to make films.

Soon afterwards he got a new idea for a film to make with his friends Jean-Pierre Léaud and Bernadette Lafont; he also brought in his ex-lover Françoise Lebrun who at that time was a literature student and had never acted before.

Eustache was loaned money from friend Barbet Schroeder to spend three months writing the script, which was over three hundred pages.

[8] After gaining little public recognition despite receiving praise throughout the years from critics and directors, such as François Truffaut and other members of the French New Wave, Eustache became an overnight success and internationally famous after the film's Cannes premiere.

The critic Dan Yakir said that the film was "a rare instance in French cinema where the battle of the sexes is portrayed not from the male point of view alone".

Pauline Kael praised the film, saying it reminded her of John Cassavetes in its ability "to put raw truth on the screen – including the boring and the trivial".

[2] Jean-Louis Bory of Le Nouvel Observateur gave the film a negative review, calling it misogynistic and criticizing the characterization of Alexandre.

In 1982, the literary magazine Les Nouvelles littéraires celebrated the tenth anniversary of the film by publishing a series of articles about it.

Yes, I'd heard that it was a classic of French cinema, but I wasn't exactly thrilled at catching an early-morning screening of a three-hour-and-thirty-five-minute black-and-white foreign-language film that reportedly consisted of little more than people sitting around and talking.

[16]After a 2016 retrospective screening at the French Institute Alliance Française, film critic Richard Brody effusively praised Eustache's sophisticated portrayal of characters whose "intimate disasters have the feel of epic clashes.