An aging man attempts to recover the past and get his life back on track in the process. His deceased mother, Aracoeli, came from a small Spanish town and married an upper class Italian navy ensign. The idyllic years she spends with her only son, Mauel, are shattered when she contracts an incurable disease and becomes a nymphomaniac. Now 43, Manuel is a unattractive, self loathing, recovering drug addict who works in a dead end job at a small publishing house. He decides to travel back to Spain to search for traces of his mother.