Delia is an oppressed woman who gets beaten for a broken plate, a burnt lunch, the suspicion that her lover gave her chocolate, or simply for saying “good morning” to her husband when he wakes up in a bad mood. She lives in a hardened patriarchal family, in Italy after the Second World War, where even an elderly and weakened father advises his son how to beat his wife – not too often so that she doesn’t get used to it, but less frequently, yet harder, so she learns her lesson and shut her mouth. Dalia is trying to escape, and the scenes of her longing to leave are so tense that you want to see the end of it all – this way or the other. Her daughter and two younger sons witness everything that happens behind the closed doors of the basement where they live, and the moment Delia realizes that her daughter’s fate will be the same, she finally takes matters into her own hands.