There's a plot, sort of. A man and a woman really want to have sex, but they keep getting interrupted. First, they're interrupted by a ceremony while they're trying to screw on a beach. Later the man goes to a fancy party at the woman's family mansion, and they try to contact each other, but they're interrupted by various party guests who want to chit-chat. A little bit after that they are pawing at each other in the garden of the mansion, when the man, who evidently is a fairly important fellow, has to take a call from a government minister. Finally the woman abruptly leaves the man, kissing a second man and walking away with him, abandoning the first man in the garden.
While that's an accurate synopsis it does not include all the bizarre surrealist imagery in the film. A random snippet from a documentary about scorpions. A bunch of armed men (militia guards?) in a coastal house, seemingly starving. A gamekeeper at the mansion who shoots and kills a small boy over an extremely minor irritance. Jesus Christ, leaving an orgy. A man shooting himself...and floating to the ceiling. And more.
Compare Un Chien Andalou, Bunuel and Dali's first and even weirder collaboration.
Provides examples of:
- Body Horror: Less of this than there was in Un Chien Andalou, which was chock full of body horror. But in the make out scene, the man is caressing the woman's cheek with what looks like his closed fist. He turns his wrist and we see that it isn't his closed fist—all his fingers are gone. (Naturally, in later scenes the man's fingers are just fine.)
- Driven to Suicide: The man has to take a phone call from the Minister of the Interior. The minister upbraids the man for somehow being responsible for a mass riot in which a bunch of people were killed. After the man scornfully hangs up, the minister shoots himself...and because this is a weird movie, the minister floats to the ceiling.
- Flashback: Amusingly, the man, who literally kicks a dog and also goes out of his way to beat up a blind guy, is a "Special Ambassador from the International Goodwill Society". There's a flashback of the man getting his credentials.
- Gainax Ending: All the weirdness is followed by a bizarre ending that has nothing to do with the rest of the narrative, but is Inspired by… 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade. The film cuts to a mountain castle where some freaky people, the title card tells us, engaged in bizarre and depraved sexual rites, rites which apparently involved murdering some young women. The gates open, and four people leave. One of those people is named as the Duc de Blangis, but is clearly Jesus, with the long hair and beard and flowing robes. The gates open again and a bloodstained woman appears. Jesus goes back and, with an air of reassurance, takes the bloody woman back inside. There's a scream. Jesus reappears, without the woman, and without his beard. There's a shot of a cross with what appears to be the scalps of the women killed in the orgy nailed to it. The End.
- Kick the Dog: After the crowd of people interrupts the man and woman while they're trying to have sex on the beach, two men forcibly drag the man away. He spots a woman with a dog on a leash in the crowd. Hilariously, he bursts free from the two men holding him just so he can dash over and literally kick the dog.
- Match Cut: There's a cut from the woman fiddling with her ring, as she anxiously waits for the man, to a servant polishing a carafe of liquor.
- Nature Documentary: The entirely random clip from a 1915 silent documentary about scorpions, which opens the film.
- No Name Given: None of the characters are named. The woman's wealthy father is called the "Marquis of X".
- Silence Is Golden: Billed as a talking film in the opening credits, and it does in fact have some synchronized dialogue as well as some more dialogue in voiceover, but the movie is probably about 90% dialogue-free. And what little dialogue there is, is mostly pointless.
- Stock Footage: The scorpion documentary, scenes of rioting crowds, and a couple other shots.
- Surrealism: Hallucinatory, random weirdness. Why is the man's face suddenly covered with blood as he's making out with the woman in the garden? Why does the kitchen burst into flame, and why does no one care? Why does the man go out of his way to beat up a blind man? Why is that one guy's face covered in flies? Among the objects the man throws out of his window in anger after the woman abandons him are a burning tree, a Catholic bishop, and a giant stuffed giraffe.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: A maid screams, staggers out of the kitchen, and collapses. A burst of flames then comes out through the kitchen door. None of the party guests reacts at all.
- Visual Innuendo: Although it's so overt it barely counts as innuendo. As the man and woman are making out in the garden, he sticks his fingers in her mouth, and she sucks on them with a look of orgasmic pleasure on her face. Then after the man is called away to answer the phone, the woman sucks the toe of the statue next to the park bench.
- Would Hit a Girl: The man clearly wants to get with the woman, but he is detained by the woman's mother, who is making small talk that the man clearly has no interest in. After mom accidentally spills a drink on the man's hands, he slaps her across the face. This gets him ejected from the party, although the woman is clearly excited.
- Would Hurt a Child: A random moment that plays in the film as absurdist Black Comedy. A man with a rifle, apparently the gamekeeper at the marquis's estate, is goofing around with a boy who appears to be his son. The mischievous boy knocks something out of the man's hands and runs away laughing. The gamekeeper then points his rifle and shoots the boy dead.
