In a modern retelling of the Greek tragedy of Electra and Orestes, Visconti's dark drama follows Sandra, a beautiful Italian Jew, as she returns from Geneva to her family home in Volterra, to unveil a monument to her father, who was killed in a Nazi concentration camp. She clashes with her brother and demented mother who heighten Sandra's guilt over being alive. Sandra struggles with issues of class, sexuality, religion, and nationality as she tries to understand her family's past. Typical of Visconti's work, he is ambivalently drawn to the decadent society he is ostensibly criticizing.