The uneventful lives of three young men who live in a small, poverty-stricken village in southern Italy.

Two members of a former group of friends find themselves after many years by chance through the streets of Milan; after a moment, memories of the past resurface.

A young man has a renewed interest in his girlfriend when he takes a job that separates the two.

Two middle-aged men work as caretakers on an isolated dam construction site high in the snow-capped Italian Alps. When one of them leaves for the valley to spend Christmas vacation with his family he is temporarily replaced with an adolescent boy. The other man is both annoyed and intrigued by the boy and his habits: he listens to loud music, sleeps too long in the mornings and doesn't drink any alcohol. They barely speak to one another in the first couple of days. But when an avalanche cuts their small hut from electricity they slowly start growing more fond of each other.

Milan, one winter in the early sixties. Valeria, a free young woman who usually goes from one man to another, falls in love with Giampiero. This time, this is a serious relationship to the point that she contemplates marriage. All the more since she gets pregnant.