On the "hottest day of one of the hottest summers in memory", Federico Desideri, a young journalist with high hopes but little satisfaction, receives from the director of the "niche" magazine with which he collaborates the task of going to Rome to interview a famous film director, author of a sensationally successful film at the center of which stands a memorable, fascinating scoundrel. Federico will soon discover that the director is a fugitive, but on the other hand, during a social evening, he will be shown the person who is said to have been the model for that character: Barry Volpicelli. A sort of psychopomp halfway between a pied piper and the Bruno Cortona of Il Sorpasso, Barry will lead Federico to an enchanted place: the Paradise, an immense compound of villas and dilapidated bungalows on the Lazio coast, where he lives in the company of a small group of lovable and bizarre old freaks.