Claire is a chic young Parisian woman married to a somewhat older husband, Jean. Claire meets her lover, Claude, at his apartment, where he gifts her a fur coat. Now Claire needs to figure out how to return home with this expensive gift without the affair being found out.
Direction
Rivette's debut: every glance is a conspiracy, every pause a panic attack.
Acting
Virginie Vitry's face does three acts of silent arithmetic.
Writing
A heist film where the vault is your own marriage.
Director
Jacques Rivette
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard appear as uncredited party guests—literally the entire French New Wave watching Claire's meltdown.
Rivette made this as a calling-card film to prove he could work fast and cheap; it launched a career of paranoid conspiracies that would span six decades.
FR
