It tells of the youth of Casanova, that, after an unhappy childhood and early ecclesiastical activity in Venice, became abbot, abandoned his vocation for the love of a countess; despite the plot, more than a portrait of Casanova the film wants to be a vivid fresco of the Venetian society of the timeThrough the childhood and the adolescence of Giacomo Casanova (from his memoirs), this is a description of how people live in the Venice of the 18th century: customs, habits, medecine, religion and most of all - the omnipresence of hypocrisy.