Passion of Love 1981

In Turin in the winter of 1862, Giorgio Bacchetti, Bernard Giraudeau, an unmarried cavalry captain with a distinguished combat record, becomes involved in a passionate affair with Clara, Laura Antonelli, a sweet and beautiful married woman. Their meetings end when he is transferred to an isolated outpost on the frontier.

There, the officers gather and socialize in the colonel’s house, the Colonel’s own residence, which also welcomes his handicapped cousin Fosca, Valeria D’Obici. Fosca is described as frail both physically and psychologically, yet she is humane, cultured, and hungry for sympathetic male company. Encouraged by the regimental surgeon, Jean-Louis Trintignant Le médecin major, Giorgio spends time with her, drawn by a mix of kindness and pity.

What begins as a tentative mercy turns into a heavy emotional demand as Fosca thrives on the attention, while Giorgio grows increasingly strained and ill under the weight of her expectations. The surgeon soon realizes that this plan, however well-intentioned, has gone awry, and he decides that Giorgio must be moved. The transfer notice arrives during a Christmas party in the colonel’s house, and Fosca erupts into hysterics, shocking the guests who had no idea of the depth of her passion.

The colonel, fearing that his honor is under siege by a liaison that started from pity, challenges Giorgio to a duel the next morning. That very night, aware of the possible end of his life and filled with remorse for Fosca, Giorgio goes to Fosca’s room and the two fulfill their complicated bond. In the duel, Giorgio wounds the colonel but collapses from the nervous strain itself. Fosca dies of shock, and Giorgio is invalided out of the army with no prospects ahead.