Daniele Dominici is hired as a substitute teacher at a liceo classico in Rimini, bringing with him a history of unexplained gaps in his employment. In his first class, he asks the students to choose between writing about a free topic or, if they prefer, the writer Manzoni. To his surprise, only one student opts for the second choice: the quiet and attractive Vanina, whose presence gradually commands more of his attention. He begins to court her and even lends her the book Vanina Vanini by Stendhal, a gesture that hints at the tension between art, desire, and danger that threads through the story.
Daniele shares his life with his partner Monica, but their relationship is strained and unsettled. In his free time he gravitates toward a circle of men who drink, take drugs, and gamble in a local bar. The group includes Gerardo, a crooked businessman who drives an ostentatious Lamborghini and is Vanina’s lover; Spider, a gay pharmacist who is secretly a devout Catholic and a lover of poetry; and Marcello, a real estate agent who moves quietly through the town’s social scene.
After a school day, Daniele takes the reserved Vanina to Monterchi to view Madonna del Parto by Piero della Francesca, and on the return journey they share a kiss. Their moment is interrupted when Vanina spots Gerardo’s car in the distance, and she hurries away. Later, on Spider’s birthday, the friends go to a disco where Vanina sulks and refuses to dance with Daniele. They end up at Gerardo’s luxurious house, where a home movie is shown. The film begins innocently with Vanina on a trip to Venice, but it cuts to a sequence of her naked and lying in a hotel bed. Upset, she switches off the projector, and the gathering departs with a lingering unease.
The following day Vanina is absent from school. Daniele visits her mother’s house, where she warns him to stay away from her daughter. Back at home, Monica’s jealousy surfaces as she tolerates Daniele’s late nights out with other men but resents his growing obsession. Meanwhile Spider has fallen in love with Daniele and has discovered a book of poems titled The First Night of Stillness, dedicated to a teenage love who committed suicide. When Spider asks about the book’s title, Daniele explains that it comes from Goethe: the first night of quiet is death, because one finally sleeps without dreams.
One night Vanina reappears, and Daniele meets her in an empty seaside house offered by Marcello. They spend a night together, but in the morning they are confronted by a furious Gerardo, who has been searching for his runaway lover. Vanina makes it clear that she does not love Gerardo, while Gerardo reveals a brutal truth: Vanina was a child prostitute, managed by her mother, who has been used by many men in town and by some women as well. Daniele has Gerardo beaten and the man leaves.
Daniele arranges for Vanina to take a train to Monterchi to stay with her sister, promising to join her later. He returns home to tell Monica he is leaving her, but she threatens to kill herself. On his way to reunite with Vanina, he calls Monica, but there is no answer. As he drives through fog, he is attacked by the lover of Vanina’s mother and is rescued by Marcello, with Spider looking after him. Wounded and distraught, he drives wildly and is eventually struck by a truck. In the private chapel of his family’s country estate, Spider attends the funeral as the sole witness to his friend’s fate. It’s revealed in the ceremony that Daniele was the only child of a war hero who fell at El Alamein, a detail that casts his life and choices in a quiet, tragic light.
