Countess Anna Guerrieri, a rich and provocative noblewoman, marries Romano, an important fascist who is very loyal to the party. Sadly his sexual performance is found very lacking by the Countess, and so frustrated, she decides to look elsewhere for satisfaction and ends up setting her sights on Stefano, a naive and inexperienced young nephew undergraduate who has recently arrived from the provinces.

Before finally entering the afterlife, the dead spend a period in a limbo from which they depart only when, among the living, there is no one who remembers them. Under the care of the salacious Domenico the visitors of a small cemetery recount how they arrived at eternal peace.

A young boy witnesses his parents' murder. Later, as he grows up, he befriends a bear in the wilderness and the chief of a local Indian tribe, and he stays with the Indians, but makes an enemy of the chief's son. As he enters adulthood he sets out to find the men responsible for his parents' deaths.

The Champions League Final, on 31st May 2001, in Rome. A football match unites men that have nothing in common with each other. The stadium becomes a modern Greek theatre, where five dramas touch one another, only to fade away in a few minutes. The main characters are, Simone, Alice, Gabriele, Pietro and Achille, all different types of people, of different ages, all looking for a place to find some peace and quiet, a taste of happiness and love, as well as someone to trust in. At the last stage people laugh, but there is always a bitter note to their laughter. And their laughter is louder and more satisfying the greater their adversity. Indeed, in the end, there is always a reason to go on, a final stage from which to rise.