The film, starring Jacqueline Bisset, Hannah Taylor-Gordon and Mary Nighy, is based on Mine-Haha, or On the Bodily Education of Young Girls by the German playwright Frank Wedekind.

Young Hidalla and her friends Irene, Vera, Blanka, Melusine and Rain are brought up in an isolated world: the girls know nothing about life beyond the college's high walls.

They play near a beautiful waterfall and are ordered not to make contact with the servants, who are categorized as inferior people and wear masks to cover their faces.

Blanka is chosen as prima ballerina, but Irene, feeling Hidalla rightfully deserves the position, reveals to the Headmistress that she is sexually involved with another student, which turns out to be true after she stumbles upon them.

The Headmistress is told that she is given the choice of a janitorial position and social ridicule and exile by peers at the school, or "the honorable decision" (her own death); while waiting in an official's office, she has a small glass of scotch and shoots herself in the mouth with the gun that was provided on the table.