Based on Malcolm Lowry's semi-autobiographical best-seller, the film is set during the local fiesta, 'The Day of the Dead', in 1938 within a small Mexican town sitting under a brooding and threatening volcano. Geoffrey Firmin (a superb Oscar nominated performance from Finney) is an ex-British diplomat living in alcoholic disrepair and obscurity, his self-destructive behaviour, perhaps a metaphor for a menaced civilization, a source of perplexity and sadness to his nomadic, idealistic half-brother and his ex-wife, who has returned with hopes of healing both Geoffrey and their marriage, and whom all exist in a triangle of deception and jealousy. Powerful stuff.