This film is the second feature by an Italian now living in Venezuela, whose former jobs include fashion photography for Vogue in Europe and America and a feature starring Verushka.

Simplicio is poles apart from those worlds, offering as it does a tale about the tender relationship between a very old man and a very young boy. The aged man, Simplicio, raises an abandoned child, whom he names after himself, in his own honest, primitive way. However, into this idyllic life tragedy intervenes.

Rubartelli oscillates from past to present and has drawn some convincing performances from his four non-professional actors, especially the boy Luis Rafael Salazar.

This is a film about which Jacob Brender wrote, in International Film Guide, that it "enobles reality, is filled with a poetic tenderness and contains natural dialogue free of unnecessary vulgarities".