Matilda is an unlucky girl: her boyfriends keep dying in strange accidents. The last of them, Torquato, a shy filing clerk, is a little afraid of this situation and doesn't know how to continue the relationship.

In a farmhouse in southern Italy, an old woman dies. Her husband summons their sons: from Rome, Raffaele, a judge facing a political case for which he risks assassination; from Naples, the religious and ideological Rocco, a counselor at a correctional institute for boys; from Turin, Nicola, a factory worker involved in labor disputes. Once home, each encounters the past and engages in reveries of what may come.

Martino Lori, widowed by his own wife, does not seem to recover from that mournful event. He has a daughter, Palma, entrusted until the age of eighteen to a guardian, Senator Manfroni: this, having reached the age of majority, will marry Flavio, leaving his father, toward whom he has a deep contempt, alone and abandoned.

Two groups of students - the third-class high school students and the matured accountants - decide to perform a show to celebrate the last day of school.

In the Catholic and traditionalist Italy, two teenagers covertly discover new prohibited games.

A small town has its placid waters rocked when a 120-piece orchestra is slated to visit on a regular basis to offer special concerts to the community and its environs. The honor of conducting the orchestra seems like it will fall to Francesco (Michele Placido), the community's most well-established music teacher, and to insure his success, his ambitious wife starts sleeping with one of the organizers of the future concerts. Meanwhile, a disgruntled member of the organizing committee decides to muddy the waters by suggesting that another conductor (Andrea, a friend of Francesco's) be hired. Andrea is also a native son who went to the big city to find conducting work but ended up doing television jobs instead. When he receives the call about the prestigious job opportunity, he enthusiastically goes to the town but his wife refuses to join him.