Red Desert

Giuliana and her young son Valerio walk toward the Ravenna petrochemical plant while workers on strike pass by. Giuliana is nervous and dips into a half-eaten sandwich offered by a weary worker. The surrounding industrial structures and debris create an unsettling, inhuman atmosphere that foreshadows their unsettled life ahead.

Ugo introduces Corrado to Giuliana during a visit to the plant, where Corrado is looking to recruit workers for an operation in Patagonia. The two men converse comfortably amid the factory noise as Giuliana departs to wait in Ugo's office. The encounter begins to draw Giuliana into Corrado's orbit.

Ugo tells Corrado that Giuliana recently survived an auto accident and has been mentally unsettled since. The conversation underscores the strain in their marriage and Giuliana’s fragile state. Corrado listens, sensing an opportunity or a complication, depending on perspective.

In their apartment, Giuliana becomes highly agitated after a dream about sinking into quicksand. Ugo struggles to calm her and fails to understand the depth of her fear. The dream lingers, deepening her sense of isolation.

Corrado visits the empty shop Giuliana plans to open and they discuss his restless, nomadic life. She accompanies him to Ferrara on a worker recruitment drive, indirectly revealing details about her fragile mental state. The exchange seeds a growing closeness between them.

They travel to a radio observatory in Medicina, where Corrado hopes to recruit a top worker. Surrounded by stark industrial architecture, Giuliana seems adrift, yearning for connection and purpose. The sterile setting amplifies her loneliness.

Giuliana, Ugo, and Corrado walk beside a polluted estuary and meet another couple, Max and Linda. They drive to a riverside shack at Porto Corsini to meet Emilia, where small talk, jokes, and innuendo fill the air. Giuliana searches for temporary solace in these distractions.

In a dense fog, a mysterious ship docks directly outside the shack. A doctor boards the vessel, and the ship is quarantined due to an infectious disease. Giuliana panics at the sight and rushes away from the pier, overwhelmed by the unknown threat.

Some time later, Valerio becomes suddenly paralyzed from the waist down, sparking Giuliana’s fear that he has contracted polio. She comforts him with a fable about a girl who withdraws into an island world to cope with fear. The episode unsettles both mother and child and deepens Giuliana’s anxiety.

Giuliana soon discovers that Valerio was merely pretending to be paralyzed. The revelation shatters her already fragile sense of reality and amplifies her loneliness and sense of isolation. She struggles to understand why her son would play such a cruel game.

Desperate to end her inner turmoil, Giuliana goes to Corrado's room and, after initial resistance, they have sex. The act, however, provides no lasting relief from her isolation. Corrado drives her toward her empty shop, where she senses that there is something terrible about reality.

Corrado drives Giuliana to her empty shop, and she voices a chilling remark about the nature of reality being terrible. The exchange deepens her sense of estrangement from the world around her. The emptiness of the shop mirrors her inner void.

Giuliana wanders to a dockside ship and encounters a Turkish sailor who cannot understand her words. She attempts to communicate her feelings, but the silence between them speaks louder than any translation. She ends with the stark realization: 'We are all separate.'

In the daytime, Giuliana walks with Valerio near Ugo's plant as the yellow smoke rises. Valerio asks if birds are still alive around the fumes, and Giuliana tells him that birds have learned to avoid it. They walk away together, the toxic world around them weighing on their fragile bond.