The film begins in the year 1789. Marie Antoinette (Catherine Walker), the last Queen of France before the French Revolution is guillotined while young army officer Napoleon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix) watches on.
Reggiani was abandoned after 12 years of marriage by Maurizio Gucci in 1985 for a younger woman. She was tried and convicted of orchestrating her ex-husband's assassination on the steps of his office in Italy in 1995.
