Maps to the Stars
Agatha arrives in Los Angeles and employs limousine driver Jerome to take her to the site of the former house of child star Benjie Weiss. Agatha has severe burns to her face and body, and takes a copious amount of medication. Benjie visits a child suffering from non-Hodgkin lymphoma in the hospital; however, the girl later dies. Benjie’s father, Dr. Stafford Weiss, is a TV psychologist who is treating aging actress Havana Segrand for abuse she suffered at the hands of her deceased mother, also an actress. Havana’s agent struggles to get Havana a role in a remake of her mother’s film Stolen Waters. Havana routinely hallucinates about the deceased younger version of her mother.
Benjie and his mother, Cristina, negotiate a role for Benjie in a film as his comeback after drug rehabilitation. At the suggestion of Carrie Fisher, Havana hires Agatha, whom she had met on Twitter, as a personal assistant. Agatha continues to see Jerome, and a romance forms, though Jerome appears resistant at first. Stafford learns through Havana that Agatha has returned to L.A. Agatha is Stafford and Cristina's daughter – however, they shun her completely, with Cristina breaking down at the thought of Agatha contacting Benjie.
Using Havana’s role in Stolen Waters to gain access to the production lot, Agatha visits Benjie on set. A schizophrenic, Agatha tells him that she has returned from a sanatorium to make amends for setting the fire that burned her and nearly killed him when he was seven. When Stafford learns Agatha visited Benjie, he visits her in a rage and warns her to leave L.A.
Benjie breaks his sobriety, getting high on GHB, and carelessly shoots the dog of his only friend. Agatha visits her mother, Cristina, to make amends. Cristina reveals that she and Stafford are brother and sister, making Agatha and Benjie children of incest – though Cristina insists it was unbeknownst to them at the time. Stafford comes home, and when Agatha tells him she knows about their familial relations, Stafford violently beats her, until Cristina intervenes. During the altercation, Agatha steals Cristina’s wedding ring. On set, Benjie is haunted by the girl from the hospital, and, during a hallucination, he strangles his young co-star. The child survives, though Benjie is now to be replaced in the film.
Havana requests Jerome as a driver and seduces him in the backseat of his parked limo in the driveway of her home, as Agatha watches from the window. Havana enters the house and berates Agatha for her poor performance at work and then verbally humiliates her when she finds that the girl has stained her expensive couch with menstrual blood. Agatha beats Havana to death with one of her awards.
Stafford returns home to see Cristina on fire outside near the pool. Benjie goes home, finds his father in a catatonic state and steals his ring. He then reunites with Agatha at the ruins of their old home that Agatha had burned down, and, on the fireplace hearth, the siblings/cousins perform an impromptu wedding ceremony with their parents' wedding rings. In order to commit suicide, they take an extreme amount of Agatha’s pills together, before lying down to watch the stars.
=== Underlying theme ===
Throughout the film, liberal quotings from Paul Éluard's poem Liberté meander "through each of the characters' lives," creating an underlying mantra for the film.
psychological, murder, dramatic, violence, haunting, satire, storytelling, sentimental