A very young Bernardo Bertolucci already shows his talent in this bleak murder mystery told in an interesting series of flashbacks A Roman prostitute has been brutally murdered in a park near the Tiber River & in order to forward their investigation the police corner a handful of people who were in the park at the time As they separately tell their versions of why they were there & what they did their narrations do not necessarily match the images on the screen that do reflect the truth By the time all the flashbacks have been completed a real picture of the crime emerges