Police are in hot pursuit of a criminal who is evading capture on a speeding motorbike. He takes refuge in an overgrown castle’s grounds and sees a pale woman burying a corpse in a shallow grave. Thirteen years later, after being recaptured and serving his sentence, the man returns to the castle, intent on blackmail — and maybe a few other things.

Luigi Tagrana, a hopeless social outcast living on the industrial outskirts of northern Italy, scrapes together a meager living by gathering worms to sell as bait. His days are spent in a bleak, repetitive cycle of labor and solitude amidst a decaying landscape, moving in and out of hospitals and prisons where he is treated as a number rather than a person.

A retired actor's search for his stray pet strings together this episodic portrait of the ancient Roman quarter.