Nine is a musical adaptation of Federico Fellini's 1963 movie Eight And A Half. The story follows Guido Contini, a forty-year-old Italian movie director whose last three films have been flops, and who is suffering from a mid-life crisis at the worst possible time -in the middle of his life. He is vacationing at a Venetian spa and trying to repair his crumbling marriage to his wife, Luisa. But his mistress, Sandra, is also in Venice and provides considerable distraction. Guido is also enamored of his former protégée Claudia, an actress, and is hard pressed to choose from among the three women currently in his life. To make matters worse, his Parisian producer, Liliane La Fleur, insists that he create a movie musical for her though Contini, as yet, hasn't the slighest idea for a film. Tormented, Guido is haunted by three earlier moments in his life when, as a child of nine, he was fawned over by his mother and aunts, introduced to sexuality by the exuberant whore Saraghina, and punished at his parochial school for having gone to visit Saraghina on the beach. When almost all seems lost, Claudia comes to Venice and inadvertently inspires Guido's idea for his movie. The film, Contini's Casanova, begins rehearsal immediately but, while it is in progress, Guido violates a trust with Luisa and alienates the other women in his life. Abandoned by Luisa, Sandra and Claudia, and with his film doomed to failure, Contini becomes seriously disoriented and fantasizes suicide. He is saved by the spectre of his nine-year-old self, little Guido, who urges him toward maturity, after which Guido abandons at last his orchestra of women and sets out in search of his one true love -Luisa.