Dora Maar is a glamorous and successful young Surrealist artist when she meets the celebrated Picasso  and they start striking sparks off each other in 1936.  She is seen as a ‘tough cookie’ – as she needs to be in a society where women have no vote and a Parisian art world where female artists can survive only as the nude model/mistress or ‘Muse’ of a male painter.  And she is initially wary of the older Picasso, who not only has a wife and son, but a young mistress that he has kept hidden for many years, and who is also reputed to be hard on women.  However, as she comes to understand the trauma and inner loneliness underlying his painting and his macho bravado, and as she works with him on the famous mural Guernica, she comes to love Picasso.  Yet while he admires and needs her, she has to stand up to his self-destructive need to test her.  With the onset of war and the looming German Occupation that will threaten both of them, can she emerge from this challenging relationship intact…?