The film deals with the true events which happened in 1949 in Italy, when then-schoolteacher Pier Paolo Pasolini was accused of soliciting three underage boys.

Naples, 1959. Pure Mathematics professor Renato Caccioppoli, Bakunin's grandson, is a tortured soul. Recently discharged from the psychiatric hospital, left by his wife, and increasingly disillusioned with academia and the Communist Party, he lives his last days with painful detachment.

Alberto Tango is the owner of a small and shabby detective agency in the area close to Naples. His collaborator is Corrado, naive boy with some problems of mental stability. Tango lives by his tricks, often at the limit of legality, to fill the huge debt that he has contracted with the cynical Rava, his ex former employer and current creditor. Tango receives a call from Sergio Tudisco, an important industrial man. He wants to hire him to find her daughter Olga, rebel girl run away. Tudisco gives Tango the sum that would solve the problems with Rava. Tango accepts after a hesitation.

Life in Naples is tough, so Neapolitans invent ways to get by. Whatever works, conning mostly, tricking the IRS, the university, the landlord, cruise ship passengers, even conning victims three times with the same ruse.

Tony is a young Neapolitan musician. He has a lot of problems and a past with drugs, but also with women. He is engaged to Susy, but he betrays her with a university professor, who has an invalid husband, but also with other young aspiring singers, who try in every way to break into the world of music. Among these there is Elena, engaged in various difficulties to organize a concert with the best names of Neapolitan music.

17th-century noblewoman Porzia leaves the cloister she was raised in to marry, but an ambush leaves her with only humble coachman Bartolo by her side. While venturing into dangerous and unknown lands, the two grow increasingly close despite their opposite backgrounds.