Torn between his mistress Carla and his wife Luisa, he searches for a story to tell and a dream to dream. Hounded by his producer, who wants to shoot a new movie, by his feelings of guilt and his sexual anxieties, Guido abandons the unfinished set and press conference and seeks refuge in a hotel room, far away from Rome and his responsibilities. Under a great deal of pressure, he breaks down in the arms of his mistress and humiliates his wife once too much, who leaves him to his never started film and his never finished appetites. In despair, Guido dismisses the film crew and withdraws to the boundary between the world of make-believe and reality. Far from the set, the man eventually reconciles with the artist and with all the female figures in his life.