Giovanna overhears her father whisper that her changing features are beginning to resemble his mean-spirited sister Aunt Vittoria.

Nella tells Giovanna that Aunt Vittoria had an affair with a married policeman and has never forgiven Andrea for exposing it.

Andrea drives Giovanna into the Industrial Zone and she meets Aunt Vittoria for the first time, finding her shockingly beautiful.

During their first meeting, Aunt Vittoria questions Giovanna about a bracelet she claims to have left as a newborn gift.

Aunt Vittoria takes Giovanna to Enzo's gravesite and presents her own account of how Andrea cruelly betrayed Enzo and destroyed their love.

At a family dinner, Giovanna notices Mariano discreetly touching feet with her mother Nella under the table.

During a chaotic outing with Ida and Angela, Aunt Vittoria meets Costanza and pointedly examines the bracelet Costanza always wears.

Nella calmly reveals to Giovanna that Andrea has been having a fifteen-year affair with Costanza, Mariano's wife.

Andrea and Nella's marriage collapses and Andrea moves into a new apartment by the sea with Costanza.

Giovanna accompanies Aunt Vittoria to church and falls in love at first sight when she sees Roberto deliver a sermon.

Giovanna, Angela, and Giuliana visit Roberto together and Giovanna draws him into a heated debate about God and the Gospels.

Giuliana accidentally leaves Aunt Vittoria's bracelet at Roberto's Milan apartment, prompting Giovanna to travel back to Milan alone.

Roberto suggests Giovanna share his bed, and she refuses, realizing he is willing to betray Giuliana just like other men.

Ida reads Giovanna a story about always feeling left out of her sister's closeness, and Giovanna kisses Ida on the lips.

Giovanna goes to Rosario's house, has sex with him entirely on her own terms, and deliberately leaves the bracelet behind.

The story begins when Giovanna overhears her father compare her appearance to his despised sister Aunt Vittoria, sending her on a quest to meet the aunt her parents have hidden from her all her life. When Giovanna finally meets Aunt Vittoria, she learns a competing version of her family's history, and a bracelet the aunt claims to have left at Giovanna's birth sets off a chain of revelations. A fateful outing with Aunt Vittoria exposes Andrea's fifteen-year affair with Costanza, shattering Giovanna's family and sending her into teenage rebellion. Giovanna finds a new anchor when she falls in love with Roberto, a charismatic intellectual whose idealism she hopes will reshape her own character. Roberto's willingness to betray his fiancée strips away the last of Giovanna's illusions about the men in her life. Giovanna ends the story on her own terms, choosing her first full sexual experience freely and leaving behind the bracelet that once defined so much of her pain.

The headline events of Giovanna's adolescence from first wound to final freedom.

Giovanna searches her parents' bedroom for photos of Aunt Vittoria and finds that her father has scratched out the aunt's face from every picture.

Giovanna finds Aunt Vittoria's number in her father's address book, calls it, and immediately hangs up when her aunt answers rudely.

Instead of Giovanna sneaking out, Aunt Vittoria arrives at the family home to collect Giovanna herself, throwing the household into chaos.

Aunt Vittoria introduces Giovanna to Margherita and her three children, Tonino, Corrado, and Giuliana, in the Industrial Zone.

Giovanna begins identifying as two separate people: the quiet, obedient Giovanna at home and the spirited Giannina with her aunt's family.

Unable to keep the secret any longer, Giovanna tells Aunt Vittoria what she witnessed between her mother and Mariano at dinner.

Costanza arrives at Giovanna's home and silently hands over the prized bracelet she has always worn, then leaves and never returns.

Giovanna's grades collapse entirely and she is held back a year at school, deeply embarrassing both of her parents.

Corrado visits Giovanna at home, a sexual encounter occurs between them, and he delivers Aunt Vittoria's letter demanding the bracelet back.

At Ida's birthday party, Andrea coldly demands Giovanna hand over the bracelet, and Giovanna furiously hurls it against a cabinet.

When the friend group reunites, Angela tells Giovanna that both Roberto and Giuliana have spoken warmly of her and want to meet again.

Giuliana meets Giovanna alone for the first time and Giovanna notices that Giuliana is wearing Aunt Vittoria's bracelet.

Giovanna skips her own birthday celebration to travel to Milan as chaperone for Giuliana's visit to Roberto.

At a dinner party in Milan, Roberto surprises Giovanna by having a birthday cake brought out to celebrate her turning sixteen.

Giovanna returns to Naples and learns from her mother and Mariano that she has been promoted to the next school year.

Before Giovanna ever meets her aunt, she pieces together clues — including defaced photographs and an aborted phone call — revealing how carefully her parents have hidden Aunt Vittoria from her world. Once contact is made, Giovanna is drawn into a new social circle, meeting Margherita's children and slowly building a second identity as the rebellious Giannina. The fallout from the affair leads to a period of personal collapse in which Giovanna stops studying, gets held back a grade, and drifts into her first sexual encounters with Corrado. Reconnecting with Giuliana, Angela, and eventually Roberto gives Giovanna a renewed sense of purpose, though her journey to Milan as Giuliana's chaperone carries hidden intentions. A small birthday gesture from Roberto at the Milan dinner offers Giovanna a rare moment of feeling genuinely seen. Giovanna returns home to the good news of her school promotion, suggesting that her outer life is slowly stabilizing even as her inner life remains fiercely unresolved.

The significant moments beneath the headlines that shaped Giovanna's unraveling and rebuilding.

Nella reveals during a mother-daughter makeup session that she has known all along that Giovanna overheard Andrea's hurtful comparison.

Andrea agrees to drive Giovanna to visit Aunt Vittoria, warning his daughter that her aunt will try to use her against him.

Giovanna returns to Andrea's car after her first visit and lies to her father, concealing how deeply Aunt Vittoria affected her.

Aunt Vittoria rushes to the record player and plays the song she and Enzo first danced to, overcome by grief and passion.

Aunt Vittoria jabs Rosario with a pair of scissors at a church flea market, and Giovanna sees her aunt's cruelty with new clarity.

Mariano confronts Andrea in a furious argument, calls Costanza a slut, and demands the two of them leave.

On the drive home from Ida's birthday party, Andrea confesses that he tricked Aunt Vittoria into leaving the bracelet so he could give it to Costanza.

Nella shows Giovanna an old family photo in which their grandmother is visibly wearing the same bracelet that Costanza once prized.

Corrado meets Giovanna outside school, a sexual encounter occurs, and the two then attempt a visit to Aunt Vittoria with Rosario present.

Don Giacomo tells Giovanna that Roberto is no longer welcome at the church because parishioners and leadership have turned against him.

Rosario confronts Giovanna, confesses his feelings, and warns that he can force Roberto to reveal his true feelings through violence.

After overhearing a classmate mock her face while praising her body, Giovanna stabs him in the arm with a pencil at school.

On the train to Milan, Giuliana reveals that the bracelet was originally stolen by Enzo from Margherita's own mother and given to Aunt Vittoria.

After returning from the cinema with friends, Giovanna notices her mother and Mariano emerging together from her mother's bedroom.

Aunt Vittoria tells Giovanna to keep the bracelet permanently and urges her to stop hiding her body beneath frumpy clothing.

Giovanna's coming-of-age is shaped less by dramatic events than by moments of revelation that strip away the idealized world she once inhabited. From her mother's gentle disclosure that she already knew about the overheard comparison, to her father's confession that he manipulated Aunt Vittoria over the bracelet, each revelation dismantles another pillar of the ordered life Giovanna was raised to trust. Aunt Vittoria's raw grief, her sudden violence toward Rosario at the church flea market, and the truth about the bracelet's stolen origins all complicate Giovanna's understanding of her family's past. A series of encounters with Corrado, Rosario, and Silvestro force Giovanna to reckon with how men view her body and to begin pushing back on her own terms. Smaller but accumulating discoveries — a family photograph, her mother emerging from a bedroom with Mariano, a train-ride confession about the bracelet — harden into a clear-eyed view of adult deception. Giovanna's final act of leaving the bracelet behind in Rosario's room signals that she has absorbed every revelation and chosen at last to stop being defined by other people's stories.

The quiet discoveries and pivotal decisions that forced Giovanna to see herself and the adults around her clearly.