Emilie (Lucie Zhang), an outspoken young telesales operative from a Taiwanese family, meets handsome Camille (Makita Samba), a high school teacher who applies to be her lodger, and quickly becomes her lover. Camille, however, has fallen for Nora (Noémie Merlant, Portrait of a Lady on Fire), a law student at the Sorbonne, who in turn becomes fixated by Amber (Jehnny Beth), an online sex-chat worker. Imaginatively adapted from three stories by US graphic novelist Adrian Tomine, Audiard’s script, co-written by Céline Sciamma and Léa Mysius, relocates the narratives to the titular 13th arrondissement in south-east Paris, on the left bank of the Seine; shot in luminous black and white, his rapturously beautiful ninth feature is a free-wheeling ode to careless young love.

Notes by David O Mahony