Theresa is an imaginative, rebellious orphan from Brooklyn, who has dreams of show business success. She tries outrageous schemes to launch herself into the public eye, until finally meeting a mentor, Sammy Cohen, whose own career fizzled as a result of alcoholism.
Set in Hamburg's “Hell's Kitchen,” a waterfront milieu of gangsters, pimps, dealers and prostitutes, the story follows the attempts of an ex-seaman first to insinuate himself into the scene, and then to extricate himself from it.
A woman was raped in her school years and broke up with her lover because of it. Later, when she became a high school music teacher, she had forbidden liaisons with her colleagues and students at her apartment.
Traveling through villages along the Nicaraguan-Honduran border, the filmmakers document the impact of the covert war against Nicaragua's Sandinista government, featuring interviews with mercenaries, soldiers, spies and civilian victims.
The film is inspired by the Mário de Sá-Carneiro short story, where the narration is made by Professor Antena's assistant who walks by his side when he is run over in a perhaps enigmatic way.