Fifteen years after the card game on Christmas Eve in which he lost 550 million lire, Franco Mattioli returns to Bologna because he learned that his friend Lele - a film critic by profession, present at the fateful game (he managed to win 500 thousand lire) - has an incurable disease. In all these years Franco has continually thought about the match and now he knows that the time for revenge has arrived. For this reason he decides to convince the people present in 1986 (in addition to Lele, Ugo Cavara, Stefano Bertoni and Antonio Santelia) to play again.
Michele Casali is a middle-class professor in Fascist Italy who teaches at the same high school attended by his only daughter, Giovanna. A shy and sensitive girl, her insecurities are only magnified by Michele's overprotectiveness—reaching a point of no return.
Rome, 1929. The Pope's tailor sends his only son, 35-year-old virgin Nello, to more liberal Bologna hoping he'll find a wife. His head brimming with ideas on romantic love induced by classical poetry, Nello falls for Angela, a beautiful blind woman who indulges him only to win back her fiancé.
