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Those who enjoy religious allegories like Pilgrim's Progress will have an easier time with this carefully constructed drama than those looking simply for a straightforward story. In the movie, circus-born Alma is a performer at the Fantasia Circus. Her mother has left her, and she is having an affair with her father, who is ill. When he dies, she is pregnant by him, which everyone in the troupe can easily figure out. Shunned by her peers, she takes to the streets as a fire-eater and then joins up with a wandering marionette troupe, led by Refugio, a very strict woman who learns of Alma's situation and requires that she follow very careful guidelines in order to have any standing in her eyes. She works with the leader's puppeteer son Sacramento to put on complex performances of Old Testament stories. As in similar allegories, characters in the movie embody the essence of their names; Alma = soul, Refugio = refuge, Sacramento = sacrament.