Camillo is a thirty-year-old man who is innocent and naive. He does not speak, sees the world in black and white, and lives with two elderly puppeteers who picked him up somewhere. Camillo is a dreamer who believes he comes from a distant world, perhaps the Middle Ages. He likes to wear armor and helmets and go into the woods to fight his own private battles. His best friend is a boy with Down syndrome, the son of the town's marshal, the only one who seems to listen to the nonsense of the one who, for many, is just the village idiot. But suddenly, Camillo's adoptive parents die, and with them, the court of friends who revolved around him.

Having just moved back in with his working-class parents, twentysomething on-and-off philosophy undergrad Walter navigates turn-of-the-millennium Turin and Gen-X ennui.

In 1943, during the war, Francesca, widowed, moves with her three daughters to her country house, to get away from the bombing of Bologna. In the villa she finds her childhood friends and her old love Guido, who has not forgotten her. Francesca has a passion for everything that comes from America, like music and cinema. She even tells her daughters that her husband who died in the war would actually leave for the USA, where he would live.

The story revolves around Elisa, a young talented ballet dancer. After an unjust accusation at her school, she has to stop her studies. The events take her away from ballet but only for a short period of time.