The Sex of Angels

They abduct Marco because they need a man for their planned weekend voyage. Nora's boyfriend refused to join, so at the dance club they singled out Marco, a medical student with a casual girlfriend, as a suitable companion. The women see him as an object for their adventure rather than a person with agency.

The plan to find 'a desirable man with no serious attachments' is established early, showing the women view men as interchangeable objects for their pleasure.

The exact circumstances of the shooting remain unclear because all four of them were under the influence of LSD at the time. The next morning, Marco discovers he has been shot in the chest. The bullet is lodged in his chest, not actively bleeding but threatening his life. None of the women remember what happened during the trip, leaving the shooting a mystery.

The women decide to tape the LSD trip precisely because they fear they won't remember events later, a foreshadowing of the memory gap that makes the shooting inexplicable.

The tape is blank because Nancy deliberately kept the microphone turned off. When they later try to reconstruct what happened during the LSD trip, Carla realizes Nancy must have withheld the microphone, sabotaging any chance to learn the truth about Marco's shooting and the events of that night.

Nancy insists the recording device stay hidden 'to avoid blame' immediately after the LSD trip, showing her intent to conceal what happened.

Nora and Nancy hesitate because they fear arrest and legal consequences for kidnapping Marco. They know they abducted him and that drugs were involved, so getting authorities involved would expose their crimes. Carla is the only one who urges them to turn the yacht toward Italy for proper medical care, but her pleas are ignored until it's too late.

The women's earlier decision to hide Marco during the Croatian patrol inspection establishes their priority: avoiding legal trouble over helping Marco.

Carla kills herself out of overwhelming guilt and despair. She was the one who showed compassion for Marco, urging her friends to get him help, while Nora and Nancy let him die. After returning home, the trauma of Marco's death, combined with the fractured relationship among the three women and the impossibility of escaping what happened, drives her to step off the pier and drown.

Carla is the only one who actively campaigns to save Marco's life, showing her moral compass and emotional investment in doing right, making her eventual suicide a consequence of failing to do so.

They seek morphine to manage Marco's pain from the bullet wound. When they reach a Croatian port, the druggist initially refuses to sell morphine without a prescription. Carla then volunteers that she is a virgin and offers to trade sex for the medicine. The druggist relents, providing the morphine after this moral compromise.

This scene establishes the escalating moral compromises the women will make, showing their desperation to avoid proper medical authorities while still trying to help Marco.

After dosing themselves with LSD-laced sugar cubes, the four of them experience altered perceptions and delirium. They record the trip on tape hoping to remember details later. The next morning, Nora is in physical distress, Marco discovers he's been shot, and none of the women remember anything concrete from the night. The LSD trip is essentially a black hole in the narrative, the true events remain obscured by memory loss and Nancy's deliberate suppression of the recording.

The decision to bring LSD and record the trip is presented as the women wanting to 'experiment' and preserve memory, which makes the subsequent amnesia and blank tape ironic.

Nancy hides the recording device because she fears the consequences of what might be on it. With Marco wounded and the group having taken powerful drugs, she anticipates that the recording could implicate them or reveal something damning. By concealing the microphone was turned off, she ensures no one can reconstruct the events of that night.

Nancy's immediate instinct to hide the device 'to avoid blame' sets up the later revelation that she deliberately sabotaged the recording.

At a lively dance club in Italy, Nora, Nancy, and Carla encounter Marco, a medical student who has a casual girlfriend. Despite his existing relationship, he agrees to meet Nancy the next day for a swim. The women then orchestrate his abduction onto the yacht, taking advantage of his willingness to meet strangers.

The club scene establishes the women's predatory approach, they specifically seek out a man 'with no serious attachments' to recruit for their expedition.

After Marco dies, the women set his body adrift in an inflatable dinghy and return to Italy to resume their ordinary lives. They put on brave faces, hoping to avoid detection or blame for what happened. The decision reflects their priority of self-preservation, they'd rather return to their previous lives than face the legal and social consequences of their actions.

Their earlier hesitation to seek help for Marco, motivated by fear of arrest, continues to drive their choices after his death.