Director Fernando Lopes’s adaptation of the novel by José Cardoso Pires is an abstract parable set in Portugal of the late 1960s—a dissolute era suspended between the colonial wars and the imminent demise of the dictatorial Salazar rule. A wealthy landowner, "The Dauphin," enjoys a decadent life of hunting, drinking, and womanizing. He oversees his estate, the Laguna, with his barren wife, his one-armed manservant, and his treasured guard dog. When a sportsman (the film’s narrator) comes to the estate for his annual duck-hunting excursion, he discovers the body of the landowner’s wife floating in the lagoon and the manservant dead on his master’s bed. The Dauphin and his dog are nowhere to be found except for the mysterious barking sounds heard over the lagoon. This ambitious melodrama is deeply rooted in the political climate of the period and one of the few contemporary works produced by the Portuguese film industry.