How does the vision of the brilliant Spanish filmmaker Luis García Berlanga (1921-2010) remain relevant in a time whose popular culture has little to do with his own? Since to understand the secrets of an artist it is essential to know the person behind, his family, his friends, his collaborators, as well as prestigious filmmakers and actors trace a collective portrait of a creator as singular as he is universal.
Three students are sent by their families to Cadiz in 1965, his last chance to pass and become what is expected of them. The appearance of some dancers disrupts their commitments: boys lose the course and girls, their work. But together they learn to decide their future.
A young officer of the Guardia Civil moves to a ski resort in the Pyrenees traveling on official business. On the way his car has a breakdown and he is picked up by a woman who is staying at the hotel. From this situation several adventures and tangles happen. Things get complicated as he must dress as a woman to avoid being surprised.
On the way to his exile in Lisbon, Mario meets Silvia, a widow who turns out to be one of his admirers. Silvia has inherited a fortune, leading Mario to resume his career, eventually falling for him. Although Mario has relations with her, he makes it clear that will never fall in love. In Madrid, Juan Pepita and resume their relationship, and because of this the jilted Nena John Colman murders before Pepita, after being arrested. Pepita accepts a contract in Argentina, reunited with Mario. There he meets Tulio, who after starting a relationship with singer eventually ask marriage.
In 1940's Madrid. Juan plays piano for Pepita and her on-stage partner Mario. Although Mario really wants to steal Juan for himself, Juan is not interested and Mario resorts to a string of lovers as consolation. When he loves (and leaves) a young nobleman, the young man wants revenge.
Honorio Sigüenza is a man in his forties who has always lived under the yoke of his possessive mother. When his mother dies, he undergoes a radical transformation that will lead him to live numerous love affairs in the face of the disapproval of his cousin Veni, who wanted to marry him.
A conflicted youth confesses to crimes he didn't commit while a man and woman aroused by death become obsessed with each other.
In Madrid, the family of Don Luis, his wife Dolores and their children, Manolita and Luisito, share the daily life of the Civil War with their maid and neighbours. Despite having failed his exams, Luisito wants his father to buy him a bicycle. However, the situation forces them to delay the purchase and the delay, like the war itself, is to last much longer than expected.
After the death of General Franco, the Leguineche family leaves their estate of Los Tejadillos, where they have remained for decades in voluntary exile, with the purpose of returning to Madrid to actively participate in the social events of the aristocracy and to get closer to the closest circle of the Spanish monarch. The obsession of the old marquis is centered on getting in touch with the most illustrious surnames, to ascend socially and to resume the pomp and courtly life that his family lost a long time ago. To this end, he decides to move into an old palace he owns, located in the center of the capital, but not before overcoming the difficulties posed by his wife, who deeply hates both her husband and her son. To regain control of the palace, the Marquis of Leguineche tries to handicap his wife, arguing an incurable mental illness, and then undertake a reform of the place in order to adapt it to aristocratic life.
After completing his high school studies at the age of twenty-four, Óscar is an immature student, unable to afford alone his return to home during the summer season. Then he manages to convince Carlos, his young math teacher, to accompany him. Already in the family home, Óscar begins to behave in an increasingly unbalanced and irrational way. Meanwhile, his family will endeavor to see him as the reflection of the absent father figure.
In 1940, in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, a young girl living on the Castilian plain is haunted after attending a screening of James Whale's 1931 film Frankenstein and hearing from her sister that the monster is not dead, instead existing as a spirit inhabiting a nearby barn.