'Venice Lido July 1934. Where it is shown that not all appendages come to harm...' In the sequences that follow the opening titles, we see through cracked images Emma Vanzetti strolling along the Venice Lido shoreline. Emma smiles and runs into the water. She has completely recovered from the operation and is back in shape to frequent the beautiful world together with her fiancé and future husband Marco Notarbartolo di Sciara, a naval officer and filmmaker for pleasure. Emma spent much of her time writing (about cooking and signing herself with a pseudonym) in a famous magazine of the time. On the subject of the female body and keeping in shape by dieting, she says: "today's beauty is thin, slender, figure-hugging beauty." Could this be a model to aspire to and ultimately a portrait of herself? Of her and her friend that we see in this film? Of the figure-conscious, elegant women who read fashionable magazines and frequent the Lido in mid-July. So it would seem by seeing the crowds of bathers and the tents/booths of the Lido. In our time-worn film, shots survive of the amusements of the small group joined by Marco. The fiancé chases his girlfriend on the beach and embraces her. They are both thinner and thinner, half erased from the material memory that is the film destined to dissolve, but their love somehow endures.