Vienna, spring 1912. The young widow Alma Mahler, the Grande Dame of Viennese Society, is urged by her lover the Bauhaus-architect Walter Gropius to make their relationship public. Shortly after her husband’s death the world-renowned composer Gustav Mahler, she believes her reputation and the premiere of Gustav’s Symphony No 9 in jeopardy. Furthermore, she feels more and more strongly that she does not want to subject herself again to the dependence to a man in who’s shadow she cannot live her own creative potential. She meets the radical artist Oskar Kokoschka, an Enfant Terrible of Viennese Society despite his youth. Alma ventures into a wild affair, a love-hate relationship, that threatens both of their existences.