Ferdinand (played by Jean Paul Belmondo) endures a bad marriage and is unfortunately fired from his job. He meets his ex-girlfriend Marianne (played by Anna Karina) at a dull party and rekindles their old flame. Fed up with everything, he decides to abandon his wife and child to escape with her. Following Marianne to her apartment, he discovers a corpse and soon realizes that she is being pursued by gangsters. During their time together, Marianne gives Ferdinand a nickname: Pierrot. They drive south, committing crazy robberies along the way. Once they reach France, their relationship begins to strain. Pierrot stops studying, thinking, and journaling, and Marianne grows tired of this lifestyle, insisting that they return to the city. They encounter gangsters in a nightclub, and in the chaos, they become separated. Pierrot desperately searches for Marianne, and they eventually reunite. Marianne uses Pierrot to obtain a suitcase of money and then escapes to find her real boyfriend—the brother she had mentioned several times before. Pierrot shoots Marianne and her boyfriend, paints his face blue, and straps himself with explosives. In the last moment, he regrets it and tries to extinguish the fuse but fails, and the explosives go off with a bang. This film was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1965.
