Vienna in 1886 was a city of elegant cafés and grand opera houses. It was there that twelve-year-old Emilie Flöge met the controversial libertine and painter Gustav Klimt. When Klimt is hired by Emilie's bourgeois father to give her some basic drawing lessons, he introduces her to a subculture of dissolute artists, wanton models, and decadent patrons that both terrifies and fascinates her.