Carmen, Maruschka Detmers in a voice-over paired with shots of the city and the sea, introduces herself as "the girl who should not be called Carmen." A string quartet rehearses late Beethoven quartets nearby, their music threading through the film as a quiet counterpoint to the chaos that follows. The eccentric Jeannot, Jean-Luc Godard, lives in a sanitarium where a doctor warns he’ll be sent away unless he shows signs of real illness. Carmen visits her uncle and it’s soon clear that he is a washed‑up filmmaker and her lecherous relative. After convincing him to lend her his seaside apartment, Carmen and a small crew hatch a plan to rob a bank.
In the bank heist, Carmen meets Joseph, Jacques Bonnaffé, a comically inept guard who nonetheless captures her attention, and the two are drawn to one another despite the mayhem around them. The string quartet continues to rehearse, their music oddly inflecting the unfolding robbery, and one of its members—Claire, Myriem Roussel—is established early on as a potential love interest for Joseph, creating a delicate thread of romantic tension amid the crime.
Carmen and Joseph retreat to Uncle Jeannot’s apartment, where Carmen recalls childhood incestuous encounters. She tells Joseph, quoting from Carmen Jones: > "If I love you, that's the end of you." The moment darkens the mood, revealing the complex, troubling layers beneath Carmen’s artful daring. Joseph is arrested and put on trial, while Carmen escapes with Fred, the gang’s leader, as the story shifts between crime and a sly meditation on motive and gender.
In flashback, Carmen reveals the robbery was meant to fund a larger project: the kidnapping of "a big manufacturer" or his daughter, with Uncle Jeannot directing a fake film to provide cover—a scheme that echoes stories like John Dillinger’s. Joseph is eventually acquitted with the help of a passionate public defender and Claire’s moral support, a brief glimmer of justice amid the film’s febrile atmosphere.
Meanwhile, Fred persuades Uncle Jeannot to direct the gang’s film, turning the real-life caper into another shot of profit and control. After Carmen receives a rose from him during the trial, Joseph is reunited with Carmen at a hotel where the gang is staying. He plans to renew their relationship and join the kidnapping, but Carmen grows distant, and the gang ostracizes him. The relationship darkens further as Carmen toys with a young hotel attendant, and Fred nudges her to end things with Joseph. A moment of coercion follows: Joseph forces Carmen into a degrading encounter in the shower.
The day of the planned kidnapping arrives, and the restaurant in the hotel becomes a stage for the crime’s culmination. Uncle Jeannot is on hand to direct the film (now seemingly shot on video), the string quartet performs publicly for the first time, and the police close in on Joseph. As in the earlier bank robbery, mayhem erupts and the lines between art and crime blur in the chaos.
Joseph is determined to face Carmen alone; a gun goes off, and Carmen collapses to the floor. The police pull Joseph away, leaving Carmen in a stupor as she asks a young hotel attendant to name the moment when the innocents are on one side and the guilty on the other, a question that lingers as the city wakes to daybreak. The young attendant answers simply, and the film lingers on the night’s aftermath and the unanswerable pull of Daybreak.
