The film tells the love story of the Polish actress Maria Visnovskaya and the Russian cavalry officer Aleksandr Bartenyev, who met in Warsaw at the turn of the 19th century, a time known as the Modern Epoch. She shined on the stage; he was a simple Russian soldier. She dreamed of the perfect love, but her ideals were ephemeral. Her life was a performance, and his role in it was a fatal one. Their real-life affair was the basis for the Nobel-prize winner Ivan Bunin's short story The Case of Officer Yelagin.