Rome in 1959, just before the release of FelliniÕs La dolce vita: the nobles of old and the arrivistes, the snobs and the beautiful people, the cinema and the bigots, the pseudo-intellectuals and the artists. And Giada Rovi-Sanlupi, the moody, unconventional daughter of a papal aristocrat. And Germaine Kenneth, the sophisticated bisexual Shakespearian English actress evocative of CanovaÕs Venus Victrix. And the pushy, promiscuous showjumper Bea Alemanni. All come together in a psychological piece of fiction where the mal mariŽ Cristiano Belisario, its Ôinternal focalizerÕ, has completed a film dramatization of Pauline BonaparteÕs life only to discover that his individual freedom, both as an ambitious screenwriter and as a passionate man, is like the large looking glass of a small drawing room: it merely gives an illusion of space.