The Designated Victim

On the street, Stefano Augenti meets the enigmatic Count Matteo Tiepolo, who warns him that destiny will repeat if they meet four more times. The encounter plants a sense of fate and a dangerous curiosity about what Matteo might want from their growing closeness. The meeting sets the stage for a web of manipulation and ambition to develop between them.

The two men cross paths again at a party, and Matteo speaks with Stefano alone on the way back from a boat ride. He hints there is something to gain from their 'friendship' and implies a larger scheme behind their alliance. This exchange begins to reveal Matteo’s manipulative agenda.

In their fourth meeting, Matteo openly proposes that they kill each other’s families to remove their problems and achieve a 'perfect crime'. Stefano refuses, but he forges Luisa’s signature to push the project forward and takes Christina Müller home, entangling more lives in Matteo’s plan. The intensity of Matteo’s manipulation becomes clear, even as Stefano resists his ominous instructions.

After a row with Luisa, Matteo sends her flowers to hint at Stefano’s deception and insincerely arouse sympathy. Stefano storms out, and Matteo arrives shortly after to coax Luisa into letting him in. The stage is set for further deceit and a widening of the marital and professional rift.

When Stefano returns home, police swarm the apartment which is trashed, and Luisa is found strangled in bed with a stocking. The crime appears like a botched robbery, but Stefano immediately becomes the prime suspect due to his affairs and business troubles. He cannot prove what happened the night of the murder because crucial evidence, including Christina and a toll-ticket, is missing.

Matteo begins to haunt Stefano, pressuring him to fulfill the dangerous orders he laid out. Stefano’s grip on reality weakens as the walls close in, and the police, along with Fabienne, become increasingly skeptical of his innocence. Matteo’s presence amplifies Stefano’s paranoia and sense of doom.

Matteo orchestrates a broader scheme by hiring Christina to locate Stefano as part of a larger setup. He also sends Luisa’s jewelry—hidden in a curtain rod—to Fabienne, creating a fake trail meant to implicate Stefano and complicate the investigation. The stage is set for a manufactured web of evidence.

Matteo reveals a chilling plan: invite his brother to dinner at his Venetian mansion and have Stefano shoot him at the designated moment. The plan instruments a perceived family tragedy as the catalyst for a perfect crime and tests Stefano’s willingness to act under a coercive force.

Matteo presses the police to accelerate Stefano’s decision, tightening the pressure around him. Stefano seizes the rifle Matteo arranged, and he hurries toward the mansion as Fabienne and the police scramble to intervene. The tension peaks as the act of violence seems imminent.

Stefano fires into the room where Matteo's brother is staying, only to reveal that the person killed was Matteo himself. There never was a real brother, and Matteo’s entire scheme was designed for Stefano to kill him as part of a self-authored ‘perfect crime’. The twist upends everything Stefano believed about the plot.

It becomes clear that Matteo orchestrated the entire scenario to die, manipulating Stefano into becoming the killer. The elaborate ruse collapses around them as the truth emerges: Matteo engineered his own demise through deception and control. Stefano is left to confront the consequences of being used in a grand, lethal game.

In the aftermath, Matteo’s death as part of a meticulously crafted plan leaves the other characters to face the wreckage of a ‘perfect crime’ that never truly existed. The film closes on the chilling realization that fate, manipulation, and murder can be one and the same when masterminds pull the strings. Stefano’s future remains uncertain as the truth about Matteo’s ruse sinks in.