Wallenberg [Helmut Berger], an ambitious SS commandant, conceives a calculated plan to recruit a select group of female informants and plant them as prostitutes in a high-class brothel on the eve of World War II. The goal is to collect intelligence on influential Nazi officials and foreign dignitaries who frequent the venue. To turn this plan into action, the SS conducts group tests with men to gauge the applicants’ suitability, then purges the brothel of its regular girls. Kitty Kellermann [Ingrid Thulin], the owner and madam, is compelled to cooperate and ultimately agrees to restructure the operation, even as she must rely on her existing staff. Kitty trains the new recruits, molding them into covert agents who will live double lives.
The operation is wired with listening devices and a network of surveillance gear, turning the brothel into a nerve center for espionage. The newly formed team begins to observe their celebrated clients, weaving the threads of information that might destabilize high-ranking circles within the regime. The toll of secrecy and danger soon shows itself: one of the women becomes pregnant and refuses an abortion, prompting her removal from duty; another experiences an epileptic seizure and is taken away by Wallenberg’s men; and a third dies by hanging, a tragedy that underscores the human costs of the mission. Amid these strains, Margherita [Teresa Ann Savoy], whom Wallenberg favors, becomes entangled with a client, Luftwaffe pilot Hans Reiter [Bekim Fehmiu], whose presence and doubts begin to complicate the operation.
As the war unfolds, Reiter’s disillusionment with the front lines grows stronger. He confesses to Margherita that he intends to defect, a dangerous admission that is captured on a recording after she submits a report labeling him a devoted Nazi. The tension within the network intensifies when a fellow client later claims he has been arrested and executed, and even spat on the corpse. In a shocking turn, Margherita shoots the man in the shower, and Kitty arranges for it to appear as a suicide, demonstrating how the operation can blur moral lines and erase individuals’ lives to protect secrets.
Margherita then takes a clandestine break to visit her parents, who are unaware of the full scope of her work. Kitty visits, and the two women confront the consequences of the scheme. When Margherita returns, she realizes that Kitty did not fully grasp the breadth of the project and the surveillance that underpins it. The balance between loyalty and self-preservation becomes a delicate dance as suspicions rise and trust frays.
Around the time of Paris’s fall in June 1940, Kitty and Margherita uncover the bugging devices and discover that the bathrooms have not been wired. With the help of Dino [Stefano Satta Flores], an Italian ally of Kitty, they improvise a new recording method of their own. Margherita seizes a breakthrough moment by trapping Wallenberg in a recording in which he reveals that his wife’s father was Jewish, that he harbors disdain for National Socialism, and that he possesses compromising information about many in the Nazi leadership with the intent to bring them down. The incriminating evidence seals his fate, and Wallenberg is shot by his peers.
In the aftermath, Kitty and Margherita share a quiet celebration as the first bombs begin to fall on Berlin, signaling a dramatic shift in the war and the moral terrain of those involved in the sordid enterprise. The story lingers on the human costs, the blurred lines between loyalty and betrayal, and the ways in which individuals attempt to resist a system built on surveillance and coercion. Annie Ross provides the singing voice for Kitty Kellermann, adding a haunting layer to the character’s dual life.
