One of the key factors in Italian unification was the overthrow in 1860 of Francesco, the King of Naples and the two Sicilies, who went into elegant but impoverished exile in Rome with his Queen, Maria Sofia. This seriocomic drama follows the deposed royals as they adapt to their new lives. The former king has recognized the political finality of his deposition, but his queen has taken to traveling in men's clothing all over Italy trying to foment an uprising to restore them to the throne. She is also frantic to have a baby, an heir, but the king has become celibate as a kind of homage to his beloved mother; he spends all his time lobbying the Vatican to get her declared a saint.

Jennifer is melancholic and romantically unsatisfied transgender who lives in a studio apartment in Naples. In the meantime a serial killer is claiming victims in her neighborhood. She is waiting for a phone call from Franco, an engineer from Genoa currently in Milan for work, with whom she had a relationship some time before, but there are malfunctions in the telephone line. Anna, another transgender, comes to help her and they start to know each other.

Set in Italy during the 1920s, a barber is in a wheelchair because of a psychosomatic illness after he lost the woman he loves.