American film producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance) hires respected Austrian director Fritz Lang (playing himself) to direct a film adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey in Capri. Dissatisfied with Lang's treatment of the material as an art film, Prokosch hires Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli), a novelist and playwright, to rewrite the script against Lang's will. Javal will lose his soul and his alienated wife Camille (Brigitte Bardot) in the process.

Contempt portrays the end of a marriage, but it is also an examination of the position of the filmmaker in commercial cinema. This was a very personal issue for Godard who, with Contempt, was, for the first time in in his career, working with a big budget under legendary Italian producer Carlo Ponti's supervision, and with a star of Bardot's magnitude.

Contempt is the perfect companion to Godard Mon Amour, Michel Hazanavicius' tongue-in-cheek portrait of Godard, presented this year at the SFFF. Both films portray women falling out of love with their artist husbands...

Shown with 10 MINUTES, NO MORE (10 minutes pas plus) by Antoine de Bujadoux.