Dedicated to Luis Buñuel, and recalling the great surrealist's The Exterminating Angel, this rarely-seen, darkly comic allegory from Cuban master Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, well-known director of Memories of Underdevelopment and Strawberry and Chocolate, traces the fate of one aristocratic family in the aftermath of Castro's revolution. The Orozco clan is shocked by the turn of events, but doesn't believe that the new political situation will last. While their wealthy friends flee to the United States, they decide to wait things out, holed up in their mansion and isolated from the chaos outside. As years pass and their food stocks diminishes, they cling stubbornly to their discreet charm of their outdated bourgeoisie ways, but gradually regress through ever-more primitive forms of social order, from capitalism to feudalism to slavery to savagery and worse.