The title for this film comes from the De imitatione Christi, a spiritual guide written in the fifteenth century by Dutch mystic/author Thomas à Kempis (1390–1471).
The film itself is a realistic dramatic comedy about a handsome young man called Son, silent and moody, who spends much time in his bedroom with the family maid, who feeds him corn flakes, strokes his hair, and reads to him from the Imitatione Christi.
Elsewhere in the family home, the young man's mother and father lie in bed and argue over Son, trying to analyze what's wrong with him, while, at the same time, admitting their physical attraction toward him, and lamenting over their own sad lives.
[1] The exterior segments with Pat Tilden Close and Taylor Mead were filmed in San Francisco parks and streets during May 1967.
In late 1969, Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey condensed the eight-hour Imitation of Christ to 105 minutes, and re-released it under the same name.