In an Italian seaside town, young Titta gets into trouble with his friends and watches various local eccentrics as they engage in often absurd behavior. Frequently clashing with his stern father and defended by his doting mother, Titta witnesses the actions of a wide range of characters, from his extended family to Fascist loyalists to sensual women, with certain moments shifting into fantastical scenarios.

For having suffered the violence of seven Himalayan Sherpas, the Countess Valentina Contarini has fallen ill of "fallophobia" and consults a healer, a supposed extraterrestrial who is actually a young Swedish man who "works" for certain American psychologists.

Odd couple Ivo Salvini, recently released from a mental asylum, and former prefect Gonnella wander through the countryside and discover a dystopia made of television commercials, beauty pageants, rock music, Catholicism, and pagan rituals.

The young Vittorio Pieroni throws himself from a railway overpass when a train is passing by; escaped suicide and rescued by an ambulance, remembers the circumstances that led him to commit that gesture