Over a meal in a French restaurant, Sy poses a conundrum to his fellow
diners: Is the essence of life comic or tragic? For the sake of argument, he
tells a story, which the others then embellish to illustrate their takes on life.
The story starts as follows: A young Manhattan couple, Park Avenue
princess Laurel and tippling actor Lee, throw a dinner party to impress Lee's
would-be producer when their long-lost friend Melinda appears at their front
door, bedraggled and woebegone. In the tragic version of what happens
next, the beautiful intruder is a disturbed woman who got bored with her
Midwestern doctor-husband and dumped him for a photographer. Her
husband took the children away and she spiraled into a suicidal depression
that landed her straight-jacketed in a mental ward. In the comic version,
Melinda is childless and a downstairs neighbor to the dinner hosts, who are
ambitious Indy filmmaker Susan and under-employed actor Hobie. Back and
forth the stories go, contrasting the destinies of the two Melindas.