Clara is a woman known for her beauty, her intelligence and her spirit. Loved and admired by all, already thinking with terror at the time of its decline. This is why she chooses a young lover, Federico, with the intention of making a happy man. He will have everything to her, learn from her every thing, the love for life, even when she is no longer so desirable. All goes well until the death of Captain Koller, the husband of Clara. Just finished the mourning period, the woman decides, against all convention, to regularize her position and marry Frederick. "They came to the mysteries of light that never no one could have imagined...". The film was shot mostly in Ariccia, in the province of Rome, at Palazzo Chigi.