An incestuous relationship of a mother and daughter which is based on the autobiography of Italian theater actress Piera Degli Esposti though it focuses more on her mother Eugenia. The liberated Eugenia and her spaced-out, husband professor Lorenzo live in a small provincial Italian town, where Eugenia is noticed as she zooms around on her bicycle and chats up strangers at the train station. While still no more than a grown child, Piera -- in tight dresses -- goes with her mother for a threesome when she engages in sexual relations with other men and subsequently suffers both from poor health and the lack of a normal home. The shadow of the future already clouds the household when Eugenia is committed again and again to the psychiatric clinic. By the time Piera has become an adult, both of her parents are in separate mental hospitals -- and both (even the father) are still sexually eccentric, to say the least.