Eternally elegant French New Wave classic offers a real time portrait of Cleo, a singer, as she awaits the results of a biopsy. 

The clock ticks for the viewer as it does for Cleo (Corinne Marchand)  as she spends the afternoon wandering the streets of Paris. She  has a brief affair with a passing soldier, meets with her composers and buys a new hat with her maid before finally meeting up with her doctor to receive the diagnosis. As she plays lover, songstress and shopper she is playing always a woman who expects to be told she has stomach cancer.