Husband and wife Carlo and Grazia make bread in their wood-burning oven and also distribute it to the sellers. They work all night long, every day of the week, as their families used to do. They live in Gorgiti, a village in Tuscany, on the mountains near Arezzo. On the other hand, in Rome, some young people live near Camellia's Square at Centocelle, in the suburbs. We see them at different moments in their lives. Their existences seem to belong to distant and very different universes. There seems to be an irreconcilable generation conflict. The film makes use of documentary and fiction, but tries to amalgamate them while simultaneously using them as opposites.

Three young women at home, the eye of the camera doesn't leave them for a moment and shows them first in a narrow kitchen, then in a small bathroom in front of a mirror, then in a bare living room where they spend part of the evening. The three are the mistress of the house and her servants, and the film is based on Les Bonnes by Genet. The servants pretend to unite to varying degrees against their mistress, and she, in turn, pretends to be a mistress who doesn't give explicit orders but who makes herself admired anyway. Each one of them plays the part that is most congenial to her.

Irene moves to Paris to begin a new life with her husband Jason and their two daughters, but an act of betrayal and her desire for revenge soon sends her to the brink of madness.