NATO Officer Andrea Rossi-Colombotti (Marcello Mastroianni) is a ladies man with an unusual libido: he can only seduce women in situations where his life is in danger. The film begins with him breaking into a Corsican girlfriends house; the girl, armed and voluptuous, believes Andrea a criminal and nearly shoots him before being seduced, but she later ends their relationship in the light of such an incident. Later, while spending an afternoon with an Asian air stewardess, he tries to achieve arousal by making up a situation about a dying relative, but the stewardess learns the sham and the liaison ends disastrously.