Ileana Pietrobruno throws everything into her conceptual stew – the film goes on to suggest, in an idea akin to Malpertuis (1972), that the hospital is stocked with the actual people that the tabloid myths are based on. Alas Pietrobruno has absolutely no idea of how to execute any of these ideas. We, for example, never actually see Scheherazade telling the doctor any stories. Pietrobruno has clearly intended the film as having some type of feminist agenda – the film contains several lesbian sex scenes and most of the characters are pointedly obsessively fascinated with attaining the perfect figure through eating disorders and reconstructive surgery. One gets the impression that Pietrobruno is trying to make some comment on the connection between tabloid myth and the beauty myth – but what exactly she is trying to say with any of this could be anybody’s guess.

The film is filled with all sorts of pretentious directorial effects – like lengthy scenes shot off a muck-smeared tv screen. Although there is the occasional image that makes the film interesting – a patient who emits a stream of menstrual blood that ends up filling an entire room and in which she and the heroine then make love; love-making in a grave as the soil is poured in on the participants. But mostly this is just a mess that gets lost in its own pretensions.