Following the production of US Go Home (1994), Claire Denis wanted to give a second life to the collaboration with actors Grégoire Colin and Alice Houri. In Nénette et Boni, again, they play brother and sister. They become separated from each other’s lives in Marseille until they meet each other during Nénette's pregnancy. The film is pervaded by references to films by Marcel Pagnol, Jean Cocteau and Jacques Demy and uses music from the Tindersticks for the first time. "While US Go Home was completely improvised, Nénette et Boni is a film that is very close to me, immersing me in memories of a shot or a sequence. It’s very exhilarating and at the same time destabilizing, because life experience is the only matrix for me to do this work. The intellectual experience is not for me."