22 Dicembre

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

Francesco, Sergio, and Antonio, three young men in a small, poverty-stricken village, lead uneventful lives. As all three are unemployed, they pass time roaming the streets and chasing girls. One day, Antonio's aunt asks him to stay with her and his cousins in Rome. He accepts and enrolls at a university, leaving his two friends behind to envy him for his new upscale lifestyle. But eventually Antonio returns, initially just for a day. Though he boasts about his life, he never returns to Rome and instead opts for his friends and the place he grew up, despite all its shortcomings.

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.

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.