This movie, based on a novel by Giorgio Bassani, plays in the high-day of Mussolini's Fascist Italy. Eraldo is a golden boy, a stunningly beautiful college student and boxer, popular and spoiled rotten by his mother. To keep living beyond his means he 'gratiously accepts' the generous, rarely returned favors of Dr. Fadigati, an elder, gay gentleman who tries to live his life morally despite the age, but cannot keep stand by as it leads to increasing violence, especially against Jews such as the brilliant student David Lattes and even a professor at Eraldo's North Italian university. More tragedy is in the making...