The film narrates the adventures of Aleardo, a rich, dreamy Italian architect who, while travelling for pleasure and work in a sailing boat, lands on the remote island of Ocaña.
Here three impoverished Portuguese aristocrats are living in dire poverty, cut off from the world and thrown back to the nineteenth century.
There is the melancholy, tormented Ilario and his sinister half-brothers, Hipolito and Felipe, together with a female servant they treat like an animal and mysteriously call “Iguana”.
Fascinated by the extravagance og his hosts and troubled by the suffering and charm of the young Iguana, Aleandro stays on the island for a night and a day, during which time he is slowly drawn into an intrigue with disturbing implications.
Is Iguana really the latest transformation of the devil (as the inhabitants of the island believe) or is she merely a victim, an innocent creature to be saved and protected at any cost? Aleardo’s journey becomes a hallucinating descent into hell.
Based on the novel, The Iguana , by Anna Maria Cortese,