Vittorio, a man of about forty-five, a villager, sets out one morning from Via del Mandrione, on foot, to reach the Rio della Grana, the location of which he generally knows. He only knows that it is "over there", near the village of Gelsomino, "a thousand meters from the Pope's bedroom". He must meet an old friend of his, Aurelio, the son of Beddamadre, an old criminal who has been dead for years. Maybe Aurelio will give him a little job, maybe he will give him some money, maybe nothing. But, above all, Vittorio wants to see the Rio della Grana, he has heard about it from the old people of the village, it must be beautiful.
Amanda believes men are too complicated and has lost faith finding the perfect one. Her friend and a psychoanalyst have a plan how to make her fall in love. She insists that Amanda not stay home alone on New Year's Eve, and only gets her way after swearing that all the other guests will be couples, except for Maxime, a gay colleague. But Maxime leaves at the last minute to join his lover in Amsterdam, and Antoine, recently separated from his wife, arrives alone at the party.
Hoping to shake up the complacent Italian Communist Party, a group of leftist radicals sends an incendiary letter to a major evening newspaper declaring their intention to volunteer to fight American troops in Vietnam as a political statement against the war.