The Night of the Iguana

A defrocked Episcopal clergyman, Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon, shepherds a bus-load of middle-aged Baptist women on a tour of the Mexican coast while wrestling with the failures and desires that have unmoored him. Haunted by his past and prone to drink, Shannon drifts toward moral collapse even as he tries to maintain a veneer of control. The journey becomes less a pilgrimage than an unspooling of his conscience, set against the relentless heat and bright, indifferent beauty of the seaside.

The group’s travels stall at a ramshackle hotel run by the indomitable Maxine Faulk, a sharp-tongued former showgirl whose volatile relationship and practical toughness anchor the place. Into this charged, claustrophobic world arrive Hannah Jelkes, a gentle itinerant artist, and her frail, poetic grandfather, Nonno, bringing a quieter, humane energy that contrasts with the others’ self-absorption. The collisions between these characters—passion meeting compassion, cynicism meeting innocence—drive the drama and reveal unexpected loyalties.

As Shannon confronts the wreckage of his life, the film probes themes of faith, desire, loneliness, and the possibility of grace without offering easy answers. Moments of dark humor and lyrical dialogue alternate with intense emotional crises, creating a portrait of people caught between moral judgment and human need. The oppressive but vivid setting—the sea, the heat, the decaying hotel—functions almost as another character, reflecting the characters’ inner turbulence.

Rather than a tidy resolution, the story leaves space for ambiguity and small acts of redemption: a brief connection, an unguarded confession, a choice that edges away from despair. The Night of the Iguana is both a character study and a moral fable, a tense, bittersweet exploration of how flawed people negotiate intimacy, responsibility, and the hope of renewal.