Charlotte spends her days going to cafes, shopping, swimming, at the cinema, reading women's fashion magazines, or with her lover, Robert, an actor.

(Indeed, the film is permeated by shots of advertisements for bras and Charlotte's monologues or dialogues about breast size and body image.)

However, instead of shopping, she cuts through the store and Charlotte takes a series of taxis to avoid a private investigator who she thinks is still following her, and she goes to collect her stepson from school.

Charlotte then attends a fashion photo-shoot at a swimming pool and eavesdrops at a nearby café as two teenage girls discuss their love lives and first sexual encounters.

Charlotte then goes to Orly Airport for an assignation with Robert, as previously arranged, before he has to fly to Marseille to act in a production of Racine's Bérénice.

Cahiers du cinéma, which had not praised Bande à part, greeted The Married Woman as a major artistic and intellectual work.

Objections centered on the title, which the board said implied all married women were adulterous, and on the film's devotion 'to the salacious illustration of scenes of sexuality.'

Godard believed the real problem was political and that 'The people of the commission have sensed that my film attacks a certain mode of life, that of air conditioning, of the prefabricated, of advertising'.

Ultimately, Godard made a few changes, including the title, though he refused to remove references to concentration camp inmates that Peyrefitte had wanted.

"Quand le film est triste", sung by Sylvie Vartan, accompanies a montage of magazine advertising images.

An instrumental version of Claude Nougaro's song 'Le Jazz et la Java', its melody partly adapted from Joseph Haydn.