Dive into the Eternal City – see Rome like you’ve never seen it before. Storefront robberies, bizarre murders, career dreamers, and cameos from Italy's foremost directors and actors feature in this star-studded omnibus tale about life and love.

Store security guard Pietro spends his days catching shoplifters, his weekends visiting his children who are in custody of his ex-wife, and his nights thinking about new ways to flirt with the store's makeup consultant. His malaise psychosomatically manifests itself in nosebleeds, outbursts of anger, visions, etc. One day, he sees a young Gypsy girl steal something from the store and lets it slide: he can't explain why, but she caught his eye. Pietro and Pabe – that's her name – warily start to hang out, knowing each other more and more, until something begins to blossom in them. Could their shared dream for a new, more compassionate life finally be at their fingertips?

The study of semantics has convinced Amedio (Jean Rochefort) that things only have relative validity, and that everything is changeable. So it seems, because while on an Italian holiday with his family, he conceives the idea that his aging wife (Marie-Christine Barrault) should assume the role of his mother, and his daughter (Jacqueline Lustig), who has an infant son, should assume the role of his wife and lover. His real mother (Lila Kedrova), an elderly invalid, dies just as this conceit begins to take form, and, inexplicably, the women placidly go along with this odd notion for a time, but eventually return to their former roles.

Crossword-solving waitress Gloria falls for a womanizing TV repairman.

Waiting for the train that will take him away, a man goes back over moments of his small-town upbringing: the relationship with his family, his involvement in the protests of 1968 and a childhood friend died too soon.