Emma is of Russian origin and is married to a powerful textile industrialist from Milan. They have three children and live in a magnificent mansion in the middle of the city. Emma looks after it carefully with the help of faithful servants. The family is part of the best of Italian society, and everything seems to be a perfectly-oiled machine until various events come to destabilise the economic and family orders. In a difficult moment for the company, the grandfather, the patriarch and owner of the family firm, passes the reins of the business to his son Tancredi, Emma's husband, but also to Edoardo, the couple's effusive son. Emma discovers a letter that her daughter Elisabetta has sent to Edoardo explaining that she has fallen in love with a girl... and the young man introduces to his mother a friend of his, Antonio, a cook with whom he plans to open a restaurant. Meeting Antonio completely destabilises Emma's world. The film, shot in the fabulous Villa Necchi Campiglio in Milan, is absolutely sumptuous. The obsessive fascination that Lucca Guadagnino transmits through Tilda Swinton's figure and the surprising music by John Adams bring to the film an air of Greek tragedy about the implacable force of the impulse of love.