Mara Ordaz, a former film star who lives in an isolated mansion with her husband, her doctor and her money manager, decides to sell the house and return to Buenos Aires; but the three men do not agree with her decision.
The Getting of Wisdom is based on the 1910 novel by Henry Handel Richardson (born Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson). Her novel is thought to be an account of her own schooldays at the Presbyterian Ladies College in Melbourne. The film is about a young girl, Laura Tweedle-Rambotham who grew up in the outback, and at around the age of 14, is sent off by her poor mother who has scrimped and saved for her to go to a prestigious women’s private college in Melbourne, the Presbyterian Ladies College.
While the Easter holidays are over, a young woman named Cécile and her brother Pierre return to the family home. There they meet their grandfather Léon, an old communist militant who has shaken Lenin's hand.
Adaptation of a literary work on the slow deterioration of an orthodox family, where the women are unable to achieve emancipation and the men succumb to insanity.
