His mind accommodates this with a perception of the gulf between moral myth and moral fact, then it flies off into a harem-scene fantasy. One of the best moments is his lying about the mistress to his wife with the face of truth and the wife's knowledge of this and her disgust-principally that he can sound so truthful when he lies and-one step beyond this- his knowledge of her knowledge. His wife arrives and is not deceived about the mistress. The director is joined by his married mistress who stays at a neighboring hotel.
With him is his writer, a fair sample of the intellectual manque who clings to much European film-making as both a suppliant and a hair-shirt. The director is at a luxurious spa hotel trying to straighten out the script for his next job. The story is about a director stuck for a story, an artist in a creative slump, in the familiar nel mezzo del cammin crisis.
