Fr. Hugh O'Flaherty is a Vatican official in 1943-45 who has been hiding downed pilots, escaped prisoners of war, and Italian resistance families. His activities become so large that the Nazis decide to assassinate him the next time he leaves the Vatican.

Piera is a young woman who grows up under the parentage of two extremely original overseers: both her mother and father have incestuous relations with her before they are committed to insane asylums. A special connection, between a mother and her daughter, full of sensuality and complicity, has allowed to portray a family full of fears, rather unbalanced, but nevertheless searching infinite love.

In her first onscreen adventure, journalist/photographer Mae Jordan (known to her readers as "Emanuelle") travels to Africa on assignment. Questions of her own racial and sexual identity come to a head as she observes the troubled marriage of her hosts, Ann and Gianni Danieli. Matters are complicated further when Emanuelle finds herself in affairs with both of them, after which she flees Africa, only to be persued by Gianni, who had earlier rejected her and ridiculed her advances.