Synopsis

Rosita has fled her melancholy hometown, and her mother's oppressive control, to study in Padua. Seven years have passed, and she hasn't accomplished much. The supermarket job she needs to support herself has penalized her with exams, and the only man she sees, at a rate of one a month, is married. But she's used to not expecting anything. On Christmas Eve, she accidentally meets an elderly lawyer, Ludovico Lepore. Austere, elegant, and enigmatic, Lepore doesn't hide a certain roughness, yet he takes an interest in her. He hires her as a part-time secretary so he can have more money and time for university. At the office, however, he begins tormenting her with misogynistic comments, subtly manipulating her. Rosita puts up with this out of necessity, or at least she thinks so. She doesn't know how much that relationship is transforming her. She doesn't know that it is precisely within a cage that, paradoxically, one learns to be free.