Famed French director Jean-Luc Godard delivers his most controversial drama with this modern retelling of the birth of Christ. In Godard's version, the Virgin Mary is a Swiss gas station employee and Joseph is her taxi-driving boyfriend. Marie (Myriem Roussel), who also plays basketball for a local team, claims to be a virgin and maintains a chaste relationship with Joseph (Thierry Rode). One day, a passing stranger named Uncle Gabriel (Phillippe Lacoste) informs a confused Marie and an angry Joseph of Marie's impending pregnancy. After the initial shock passes and his prediction comes true, the expectant couple marries and raises their child, Jesus (Malachi Jara Kohan), who eventually abandons his family to pursue "his father's business." All the while, Marie grapples with her sexuality, searching for a link between her individual body and spirit.

Picketed and protested during its highly publicized theatrical release, Godard's film isn't the blasphemous outrage religious conservatives deemed it to be. Instead, it is a challenging work that transplants the classic story of the Immaculate Conception into the modern world, asking new questions about femininity in a male-dominated society. Roussel's Marie is a striking invention, a character that works literally, as well as being a symbol of the new woman of the late-20th century.