The Sienese Pia Tolomei is imprisoned in a castle by a jealous husband. Based on the novel by Marguerite Yourcenar, inspired by a story from the Italian Middle Ages.
Shanta Dhamle lives a wealthy lifestyle in Bombay along with her dad, Shamrao, and mom, Ansuya. She incurs their displeasure when she falls in love and gets married to a poor and overly sensitive writer, Gopal, who moves in with them, and continues to suffer verbal abuse at Shamrao's hands.
The innkeeper Barnabáš and the teacher Isidor Slovíčko succumb to the lure of old Moreles, to whom the young Taussig sends enthusiastic letters from America.
In this film the director's recurring concerns return: the divisions in the Chilean left, and its contradictions between what the director calls the "traditional" and the "revolutionary" left.