A trilogy of short films tell the life of Robert Tucker. "Children" (1976) looks at his birth and formative at an austere boy's school. The bleak environment is not aided by the loveless, violent domestic life he experiences. Nonetheless, his father's death has a major impact on him. In "Madonna and Child" (1980), he is a closeted homosexual working in a grim office and still living at home with his daunting mother. In the final entry, "Death and Transfiguration" (1983), he deals with his mother's death and then faces his own impending doom.