There are certain kinds of spaces which seem particularly suited to Rivette's quest for the hidden narratives which an alert storyteller can extract from the geographical logic of their surroundings. This chapter is concerned with two examples of such spatial narratives, explored and reexplored by Rivette: firstly the city, and more particularly the city of Paris; secondly the bourgeois house in its many different but comparable forms, all of which speak of a certain conception of family organisation and of the hierarchy of human activity. Rivette's first feature film is programmatic from its opening. The connection between the 'plot' and the city is explicit in Out 1. The 'domain' of Secret Défense is quite literally 'my father's' for the protagonist, Sylvie. In Céline et Julie vont en bateau and L'Amour par terre, there is no prospect of inheritance and no implication of ownership when the protagonists enter the house.