SALON KITTY

Wallenberg (Helmut Berger), an ambitious Nazi SS commandant, devises a plan to select a special group of female informants in order to plant them as prostitutes in a high class brothel on the eve of World War II in order to collect intelligence on various important members of the Nazi party and foreign dignitaries who frequent the establishment. The selected SS auxiliaries are then group tested with SS men to assess their suitability. The brothel is then purged of its regular girls and Kitty (Ingrid Thulin), the owner and Madam of the brothel, is forced to comply and allows her original girls to be deported. Kitty initially despairs of the girls' abilities and has to train them up. The building gets wiretapped with listening devices and other surveillance equipment, after which the new girls proceed to spy on their illustrious clients.

The operation seems to yield results but takes a toll on the girls. One falls pregnant and refuses to abort the baby: Wallenberg has her removed from duty and handed over for medical experimentation. Another girl suffers an epileptic fit and is taken away by Wallenberg's men, while a third hangs herself. One of the informants, Margherita (Teresa Ann Savoy), who is Wallenerg's favourite, falls in love with a client, Luftwaffe pilot Hans Reiter (Bekim Fehmiu). Over the first few months of the war, he becomes disillusioned with what he has seen at the front and confesses to Margherita that he plans to defect. She submits a report claiming he is a devout National Socialist, but his confession is picked up on a recording. Later, another one of Margherita's clients tells her that he has been arrested and executed and that he personally spat on the corpse. Margherita spontaneously shoots him while he is in the shower and Kitty makes it look like a suicide.

After the killing, Margherita takes an unauthorised break from the brothel to visit her parents, who don't know what her work entails but become suspicious when Kitty visits. Kitty asks Margherita to return to work, saying she can't cover for her much longer and her absence will become suspicious. Margherita angrily condemns Kitty for her involvement in the operation, but realises that she knew nothing about it: Kitty thought the Nazis had merely commandeered her brothel for their own use and was unaware of the surveillance and reports.

Around the time of the fall of Paris in June 1940, Kitty and Margherita discover the bugging devices and determine that the bathrooms are not wired. With the help of Dino (Stefano Satta Flores), an Italian friend of Kitty, they acquire their own recording device. Margherita entraps Wallenberg into a recording where he tells her that his wife's father was Jewish, that he doesn't believe in National Socialism, and that he has the dirt on all the top Nazi hierarchy and intends to bring them all down. Margherita takes the recording to Wallenberg's colleagues in the SS, and he is immediately apprehended and shot. Kitty and Margherita celebrate, as the first bombs start to fall on Berlin.

Margherita and Kitty discover the surveillance, entrap Wallenberg with a recording of his admissions, and deliver it to the SS, leading to Wallenberg's immediate execution.

The ending exposes the dangers of totalitarian power structures, where trust is weaponized and betrayal is a tool for survival. By turning the surveillance apparatus against its master, Margherita and Kitty reclaim a measure of agency—but not without moral compromise and lasting scars. The conclusion underscores the destructive intersections of sexuality, control, and political ambition within a regime built on paranoia.