The basic premise of this film is that the female lead character, the Young Woman - short-handed in the script as 'the Girl', the 'Red Rose' of the title - has a vivid and at times unfettered head-in-the-clouds romantic imagination. She is a sort of modern-day Alice in Wonderland. But whereas Alice experiences memorable characters such as the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit, the Girl encounters Toy Soldiers, marching bluebells, a dancing swan - and a Young Man who, in her colorful mind, is Mr Right, her romantic ideal: her Prince Charming. The Young Man appears throughout the film, but he is always a figment of the Girl's romantic thoughts. He does not exist in any real or physical sense: he appears in her company without warning, and he invariably disappears in the same unexpected way. He is there, and yet he is not there - not in the real sense. The romantic episodes which the Girl lives out are vivid and very real to her at the time, but she always becomes seems becomes reconciled to the stark certainty that her imagined bubble will eventually burst and the Young Man will once again vanish.