Performance takes centre stage in this tale of four aspiring actresses, studying under the tutelage of a famed tutor, who find themselves embroiled in an increasingly menacing off-stage drama.

With a title that seems to refer back to his Cahiers comrades, and a slew of references to characters from Balzac's La Comedie Humaine, (one of which would appear as a character in Rivette's next film), La Bande des quatre does, as Jonathan Rosenbaum writes, have the air  of an 'anthology'.

Revisiting and refining a compendium of his cinematographic obsessions - from the interplay of identity and performance, to the sinister machinations hidden beneath everyday life - Rivette crafts perhaps his most accessible film since Céline and Julie Go Boating.