Plot
A naked man, Fénix, clings to a tree trunk in a cell at a mental asylum. A doctor and nurses coax him from his perch using a raw fish, which he starts to eat. As they dress him in coveralls, a tattoo of a phoenix on his chest is made visible.
Years ago, Fénix was a child magician in a Mexican circus, Circo del Gringo, run by his father Orgo, a knife-thrower, and his mother Concha, an aerialist. The circus includes a tattooed lady who performs with Orgo, her adopted daughter Alma (a deaf-mute mime and tightrope walker whom Fénix loves), Fénix's dwarf friend Aladin, a troupe of clowns and an elephant. Orgo flirts publicly with the tattooed lady.
Concha also leads a Folk Catholic cult whose patron saint is a girl who was raped and had her arms cut off.[a] Their church is about to be razed at the behest of the landowner, but the followers make a last stand against police and bulldozers. A Monsignor arrives to resolve the conflict, but he decides the temple is sacrilegious and leaves in disgust, so the demolition proceeds. Fénix leads Concha back to the circus, where she discovers Orgo's affair, but Orgo hypnotizes Concha and rapes her.
The circus elephant dies, much to Fénix's grief. It is paraded through the city inside a giant casket, which is dropped into the city dump. Hundreds of scavengers open it, tear apart the elephant, and take away the meat. Orgo chides Fénix for crying "like a little girl" and tattoos a phoenix onto his chest, identical to the one on his own chest, using a knife dipped in red ink. This tattoo, Orgo says, makes Fénix a man.
Later, during Concha's aerial act, she sees Orgo giving the tattooed lady a pearl necklace. She chases after them, finds them about to have sex, and pours sulphuric acid on Orgo's genitals. Orgo retaliates by cutting off both her arms, then walks into the street and slits his own throat. Fénix witnesses all this from the trailer that Concha locked him inside. Afterwards, he sees the tattooed lady drive off with Alma.
The adult Fénix is taken to a movie theater along with patients who have Down syndrome. A pimp intercepts them, gives them cocaine, and introduces them to an obese prostitute. Fénix spots the tattooed lady, now a prostitute, and is consumed with rage. Back at the asylum, Fénix's armless mother calls out to him from the street and he escapes by climbing down a rope from his cell window. The tattooed lady tries to pimp Alma, who runs away. An unseen assailant stabs the tattooed lady to death, and Alma later finds her body.
Fénix and Concha go on to perform a stage act, "Concha and Her Magic Hands," in which he stands behind her and moves his arms so they appear to be Concha's. Offstage, she uses the arms of her son, a knife thrower like his father, to kill all the women he is interested in, including a burlesque performer and an androgynous wrestler. She totally controls Fénix, who is fascinated by The Invisible Man, telling him that he is nothing without her and that no one sees him. He frequently hallucinates, and in a dream sees the many other women he has killed and buried, who haunt him.
Alma finds Fénix, and they plan to run away from Concha, who tries to force Fénix to murder Alma as well. However, after a struggle, he plunges a knife into Concha's stomach. She vanishes after taunting Fénix by saying she will always be inside him. Flashbacks reveal that Concha in fact died after being maimed by Orgo, and that Fénix has kept a life-sized mannequin of his armless mother that he used on stage and at home. He destroys his homemade temple and throws away the mannequin with the help of his imaginary friends, Aladin and the circus clowns.
Alma removes the red artificial nails, always worn when he was doing "Concha's" bidding, from Fénix's hands and leads him out of the house, where police order them to put up their hands. As they both comply, Fénix regards his own hands with awe. Realizing that he has finally regained control of them brings him joy and peace.
