Goliarda Sapienza

A troubled and neurotic Italian Countess betrays her entire country for a self-destructive love affair with an Austrian Lieutenant.

Six vignettes explore love and desire in Rome, from prostitution and heartache to unwed motherhood and the male gaze.

In ancient Rome a love story blossoms between Fabiola, daughter of a senator, and Rhual, a Gallic gladiator. After Fabiola's father is killed, the Romans blame the Christians and the persecution begins. Rhual confesses to being a Christian, is accused of the murder and sentenced to fight to the death in the arena.

A struggling model concocts a story of being raped and beaten by three strangers and soon becomes a media darling. Complications arise when the police eventually arrest three suspects.

A group of rich young intellectuals hiding from the war in rural Italy play at being partisans when some disbanded soldiers and some refugees ask them for shelter in their villa. The young and aristocratic Andrea strikes up a friendship with a peasant girl, Lucia. Then the Germans suddenly appear, looking for the real partisans, and the time comes for serious decisions.

A number of different segments taken from 19th century Italian stories.

Middle class Sandra, engaged to be married and living in Turin, searches for her missing sister that is estranged from her family. For this, she enters the morally degraded back allies of the port city of Genoa and is exposed to the world of sex trafficking.

'The subject of this film is the conversation between a man and a woman. A couple, maybe lovers, maybe married, it doesn't matter. (...) During this conversation, we do not see but the city of Rome. I wanted to transmit that what Rome provokes in me, the feeling of an intrinsic matter, indissoluble, in difference with Paris, made of small parks and open spaces, crossed by the sky and the wind. Hand in hand with the film, the difficulty of the two lovers assumes a clearer, more explicit form. But as much as, in my opinion, it is impossible to describe and film Rome, the difficulty in the love of a couple can never be totally understood.' - Marguerite Duras, Venice film festival catalogue, 1982.