Vienna, 1957. In a “fin-de-siècle” hotel, Max, the night porter, recognizes one of the guests. He had met Lucia, the wife of a conductor, as a teenage girl fifteen years earlier in a Nazi concentration camp. Max had been an officer in the SS and had formed a sadomasochistic relationship with the girl, a mixture of tenderness and profound cruelty, characterized by a murky but deeply-felt complicity. Lucia too has recognized Max and, fatally, the relationship between the two of them, between victim and tormenter, is formed again.
Filmography: Ripley's Game (2002), The Berlin Affair (1985), Beyond the Door (1982).
The film contains disturbing scenes.