L'Argent

A counterfeit five-hundred-franc note passes through several hands, from shop to shop and person to person, before it reaches Yvon, an innocent young man who does not recognise it as fake. Accused of passing false money, he is drawn into a chain of misfortunes that costs him his job and his freedom, and the hardship he meets in prison and afterwards changes him profoundly. Robert Bresson wrote and directed the film, an adaptation of a short story by Leo Tolstoy, and it was released in 1983.

Bresson's eighth feature followed Four Nights of a Dreamer and continued the spare, restrained style he had developed across a career that began in the 1950s with A Man Escaped and Pickpocket. Christian Patey plays Yvon, with Vincent Risterucci, Sylvie Van Den Elsen, Michel Briguet, Caroline Lang and Marc Ernest Fourneau in supporting roles. The film runs eighty-five minutes and was produced in France and Switzerland.

On IMDb it holds 7.4 out of 10 from around thirteen thousand votes, and on TMDB 6.9 from roughly three hundred. A critics' rating of 8.6 from thirty-two reviews places it well above the audience scores, a gap consistent with its reputation as a demanding, formally rigorous work.