Ferreri’s anti-bourgeois black comedy centres on the life of Rodolfo, a middleclass man who leases one room in the overcrowded apartment of Doña Martina, a crotchety octogenarian who is dying. Until he can afford his own place, Rodolfo cannot marry Petrita, his embittered fiancée. Petrita persuades her meek boyfriend to propose to Doña Martina so that he can inherit the apartment. Grotesque, funny, macabre, this is the result of the first union of two geniuses – Ferreri and the corrosive and highly intelligent screenwriter Rafael Azcona.