Au-delà du bien et du mal (1977)

Paul Rée, a philosopher and friend of Friedrich Nietzsche, meets Lou von Salomé, an uninhibited woman. After getting to know her, the young man decides to marry her, but Lou is a woman who would feel imprisoned in a relationship. Thus begins a ménage à trois, but the situation is made worse by Friedrich’s sister, Elisabeth, who is in love with her brother and does everything she can to make him distance himself from Paul and Lou, both of whom are Jewish and therefore “corrupt.” But Friedrich listens neither to Elisabeth nor to his mother, and leaves home to live with Lou and Paul. Their life together is not easy: Lou first makes love to Friedrich, then to Paul, but when the two men quarrel, she pretends to have sex with another man in an attempt to make peace between them. Realizing that the situation keeps getting worse, Lou chooses to leave for Berlin with Paul, leaving Friedrich alone. The lonely man encounters the “devil”; after this encounter, he decides to try to repair his relationship with the other two, but once again, things do not end well. Paul and Lou’s relationship is troubled because it is an “open relationship,” and Lou has several lovers. One night, Karl, one of Lou’s lovers, attempts suicide because she does not want to marry him. Lou then feels obliged to marry him, earning the anger and grief of her former lovers. Paul becomes a doctor, but after some time he is targeted because he is Jewish and disappears after a group of thugs drag him into a bush, suggesting a grim fate. Friedrich, meanwhile, goes mad after learning that Lou has married. Lou then visits Nietzsche and remembers all the good times they spent together.