A group of rich socialites go on a leisure expedition to a rocky atoll near the cost of Rome. One of their group --- Anna --- vanishes without a trace. Did she commit suicide? Was she murdered? Did she abandon her friends in another boat from other tourists? Did she swim to a different nearby island/atoll? The audience does not know. And of all her rich friends only her father seems to be torn up about her disappearance. Her best friend --- Claudia --- and her boyfriend --- Sandro --- spend 80% of the movie supposedly looking for her. In reality, the two of them leisurely pursue an affair with each other all over the picturesque vistas of Southern Italy. Anna's name does not even cross their lips the whole time they look for her. And somehow, precisely because of the incongruous lack of concern about Anna that these two main characters display, Anna's character becomes quite conspicuous between them: as a giant elephant that neither wants to acknowledge. The more Claudia shows herself to be besotted to Sandro as the film goes on, the more the audience is led to suspect that she killed Anna in order to keep Sandro to herself. But the final revelatory confirmation never comes. Instead, in the final moments of the film Claudia discovers Sandro having casual sex; and thus it is revealed that, for Sandro, his relationship with Claudia is no more than a fling, and --- just like his sexual encounter at the end of the film --- it is devoid of real love or transcendence; and thus is Claudia's soul --- if she indeed murdered Anna --- burned away for naught via a grotesque act of meaningless evil. In the very final scene, Claudia redemptively forgives Sandro for the hell that surely awaits her.