APPASSIONATA

Emilio is an in-demand dentist who lives a stable life with his wife Elisa, a former opera singer, and their teenage daughter Eugenia. Elisa is mentally ill from wanting to relive her glory days as a singer, and Eugenia often antagonizes her mother while cuddling up to her father, having a long-held incestuous desire for him. One day, Eugenia brings home a school friend, Nicola, who Emilio becomes attracted to, but is sympathetic towards Elisa, becoming her friend and the only person who truly attempts to understand and act kind to her. Despite this, Nicola goes to Emilio's office for a dental appointment, and manages to seduce him.

Nicola continues frequenting the family’s house meanwhile Eugenia makes up promiscuous stories about boys, although she is seemingly a virgin. When Eugenia realises Emilio had overheard one of her stories, she locks herself in her bathroom while her father demands she opens the door. Her father barges in and asks her whether she was telling the truth. Eugenia admits she was not telling the truth but “you didn’t believe me!”. Following this, Emilio comforts Eugenia, apologising for not believing her.

At Eugenia’s birthday party, Nicola attempts to defend Elisa when Eugenia brings all her friends to play with her mothers dresses (even though her mother asks them to be careful with them as they are special to her) and asks her mother to play them some piano. As Elisa entertains the guests, Emilio and Nicola have sex.

Eugenia asks her father whether ten days without menstruation means that a girl is pregnant, alleging that she is “asking for a friend” - whom Emilio assumes is Nicola. Fearing that she may be pregnant with his baby, Emilio corners Nicola and asks if she is pregnant to which she insists she isn’t, Emilio then kisses her.

Eugenia then lures and seduces her father, but the two are caught by Elisa, who suffers a mental breakdown as a result before Emilio comforts her. Elisa is institutionalized, and this gives Emilio leeway for him to let Nicola move in with him as his lover. Emilio gets drunk and Nicola puts him to bed. In the dark of night, Emilio has sex with a girl who he believes is Nicola. In the morning, however, it is revealed that Eugenia was the woman from the night before, and she walks away from Emilio's bed naked while her father is asleep before he could discover that he had sex with his own daughter. Later, Eugenia and Nicola leave for school together as Emilio watches them both from his window.

Emilio, after his wife Elisa is institutionalized, allows Nicola to move in with him. In a drunken state, he unknowingly has sex with his own daughter, Eugenia, believing she is Nicola. The next morning, Eugenia leaves, and both girls go to school as Emilio watches from the window.

The film’s ending cements the destructive consequences of unchecked desire and blurred familial boundaries. Emilio’s moral collapse is finalized by his unwitting incest, while the women around him—his institutionalized wife and the two girls—move on, leaving him isolated and complicit in the web of transgression. The ambiguous future of the characters underscores the tragic fallout when repression and taboo collide.