Oliviero, a young peasant, is forced to leave his bride on their wedding night in order to get his dying mother to regularize her will. Of course, the village is very far away-and then the bus driver insists on taking a detour by way of his own mother's home-so there is time aplenty for Oliviero's life to be transformed. By what? By "nothing...nothing happens in (the film), nothing at all" (Buñuel); but it is his very delight in mundane absurdity that makes Subida al Cielo vintage Buñuel. Ado Kyrou writes, "(This is) a relaxed comedy with a hint of something more meaningful just beneath the surface. A young man on a motor trip discovers life and learns to know people and things. It is a modern version of the picaresque tales that Buñuel so loves. The trip begins, in fact, with an absurd birth and ends with a ridiculous death. Meanwhile, the young man has learned what love is, has flirted with politics, has deflated a few balloons: business, the family, folklore, and so on."