When circus performer Fenix’s treatment in a sanitarium starts showing results, he is allowed to participate in a trip to the theatre with his fellow patients. A chance encounter with another performer from his past – the Tattooed Lady with whom his father cheated on his mother – allows him to reconnect with his mother and start a new life – and  double act – together. Pay no mind to the dead Tattooed Lady in the corner.
By acting as her arms, Fenix is able to access memories long-suppressed, from his mother’s minor cult dedicated to the worship of an amputee girl to his father’s simply being the actual, literal worst human of all time. What unfolds is a surrealistic, camp-ish psychodrama that only Jororowsky could pull make.
CWs: SA, CSA and trafficking, suicide, super outdated representations of disability, the elephant dies (but wasn’t real)