Synopsis:

This is the story of Nana (based on the literary classic by Emile Zola), a young woman who breaks out of her working class milieu to become one of the great courtesans in Second Empire France. With her breathtaking looks and boundless ambition, Nana unites both innocence and threatening sexuality in her voluptuous body. Foreshadowing the coming adventures in her turbulent life, her first public appearance is a mixture of delirious triumph ad abject failure: her role as Venus in a small musical theatre makes it painfully clear that she can neither sing nor act, yet she ignites the desires of every man in the audience…
Many are those who are willing to put their fortunes, their honour, their lives at her feet: Steiner, the industrialist who buys hes a palace but loses his fortune; Philippe and Georges, the brothers whose struggle to possess Nana brings shame, dishonour and death to their honourable, well-to-do family… And, towering above all the others, the melancholy, wistful Count Muffat. Consumed by his love for Nana, Muffat suffers every indignity for the sake of one kiss, one caress from her. But Nana, torn by her fierce desire for independence and her insatiable need for luxury and attention, persists in keeping him at a distance. She knows that she can only destroy men, and that Muffat is the only one she must not destroy, the only one who will be faithful to her until her own death…