The night in a big city. A young woman walks alone on a bridge, her gaze unfathomable. She stops, hesitates briefly, then jumps to her death. Under mysterious circumstances, Mara survives the jump and wakes up dazed in hospital. The doctors are strangely reserved when she calls her boyfriend Janis. Mara flees home from the hospital, but finds a completely changed apartment where another woman has taken her place and throws Mara out of the apartment. It slowly becomes clear that no one recognizes Mara, she seems to have completely "fallen out of the world".

A bearded director named EVA, a fictive Rainer Werner Fassbinder, lives in a large house with his cast and crew as he films Dumas' Lady of the Camellias. His accountant informs him he has many unpaid bills and little cash on hand. EVA throws a fit and fires him. He then proceeds to play one person off against another, dismiss with cruelty his recent lover Ali, sleep openly with his leading lady Gudrun, and make a direct and public play for his leading man, Walter. He's mercurial, dictatorial, and manic. Will he finish the film, having drawn great performances from his actors through his manipulations, or will his antics set events in motion that spin out of his control?