Contempt is a multi-layered story of love and relationships, a tribute to cinema and an inconspicuous ironic incitement of France. An adaptation of a novel by Alberto Moravia, the film revolves around screenplay writer Paul Javal and his wife Camille. Paul is writing a screenplay for Fritz Lang based on Homer’s Odyssey but their ideas about the story and the film differ. Besides, something has crept into his relation with Camille – a subtle feeling or rather a seed of it – which slowly begins to gnaw away at their love. A tale of France, French culture and “Frenchness”, the entire film is set in French national colours of red, white and blue, sometimes ostentatiously,
with the help of colour filters such as in the opening scene with naked Brigitte Bardot, other times more furtively, through the choice of ambience or decorations.