Juliette lives in one of many luxurious high-rises being erected in the "banlieues" (suburbs) of Paris. Though the structures were meant to provide housing to families working in the growing capital during the prosperous post-war years, Godard sees the "banlieues" as the infrastructure for promoting a value system based on consumerism, a term he equates with prostitution itself. Godard argued that a consumerist society demands a workforce living in regimented time and space, forced to work jobs they don't like, "a prostitution of the mind."