Juliette, Brigitte Bardot is an 18-year-old orphan living in Saint-Tropez in 1956 who flaunts her sensuality with fearless ease: sunbathing nude in her yard, strolling barefoot, and flouting social norms. This unabashed approach draws both fascination and fury from the town's residents. Her intimate life includes a relationship with the wealthy Eric Carradine, Curd Jürgens, who envisions a casino and is willing to use Juliette to help realize his plans, even as he probes to woo her for himself.
Antoine, the eldest of the three Tardieu brothers, Christian Marquand returns from Toulon for the weekend to hear Carradine's proposal. Juliette waits for the tall, magnetic figure to carry her away to Toulon. Carradine's intentions toward her are purely physical, a detail Juliette overhears and then rejects; he reassures her that they will meet on the morning bus, has his way with her, then lets the bus drive away, leaving her aching and disappointed.
Feeling protective, her elderly guardians threaten to send her back to the orphanage—Madame Morin, Jane Marken—a fate that could confine her for three years. To keep her in Saint-Tropez, Carradine begs Antoine to marry her, but Antoine declines. His more naive middle brother, Michel, Jean-Louis Trintignant, falls under Juliette's spell and proposes marriage. They are wed in a sparsely attended church service, with Antoine conspicuously absent. Later, in a public square, a local tough insults both Michel and Juliette; Michel's counterpunch costs him a severe beating, yet the couple slips back to the family home, shares a fierce, passionate moment, and Juliette theatrically heads downstairs to load dinner plates and grab a bottle of wine, leaving their guests wide-eyed at the audacity of it all.
Carradine purchases the large harbor marina and offers the Tardieus a 30% stake to seal the deal; Antoine agrees to run it. With him back in Saint-Tropez, Juliette's behavior grows more openly defiant toward Michel. When he is away on business, she slips away in one of the marina's boats. Engine trouble spirals into a fire, and Antoine dives to rescue her. Washing up together on a wild beach, the encounter rekindles their dangerous attraction.
Juliette falls feverish after the incident and confesses the affair with Antoine to Christian. Madame Tardieu, Marie Glory, who has always disliked Juliette, presses Michel to end the marriage. Michel goes to talk, but Juliette has vanished.
Michel searches the town, and a confrontation with Antoine at the yard escalates into a volatile scene where a gun appears and a fight ends with an accidental blow that dazes Antoine. Juliette drifts to a bar, begins a spree of improvised dancing with a band of Caribbean musicians, and calls in her friend Lucienne, Isabelle Corey, who alerts Eric that Juliette is becoming the center of attention. Eric arrives with a plan to whisk her away to a life of ease, but she refuses. On the way, Eric reveals his deep feelings and, to Antoine, confides a stark judgment: > That girl was made to destroy men.
Back at the bar, Michel finally confronts Juliette with heartbreak and fury, and in a tense moment he slaps her four times. She bears the blows with a defiant smile, signaling that their volatile bond may endure even as external pressures pull them apart. They walk home together, hand in hand, moving toward an uncertain future.
