A forged 500-franc note is cynically passed from person to person and shop to shop, until it falls into the hands of a genuine innocent who doesn't see it for what it is. This will have devastating consequences on his life, and cause him to turn to crime and murder... In this masterpiece, Robert Bresson creates a harrowing, caustic and socially relevant indictment of materialism and amorality where the body is not a biological entity, but rather, a representation of a material one: the universal mechanism of money — created, utilised, circulated. In the impersonal detachment of contemporary society, money serves as the surrogate for human emotion: love, guilt, shame, devotion, trust are frivolously expressed through its casual exchange. But money also exhibits a biological behaviour in its virulence and contaminates everyone who comes in contact with it.