Old friends meet in an isolated house tucked away in a remote Sardinian valley. Defeated by their own lives, the men travel through their memories and escape the present moment by taking refuge in the past. As the present offers them no way forward, their only way out is through alcohol and drugs.
An average worker who feels downtrodden at work and home, dreams of becoming a dictator. His aunt has her own fantasy that the love-of-her-life, a fairground magician, will return to her once more.
Giulia is constantly torn between the need to feel at home and be loved and a wild desire for freedom. One day she finds herself homeless and begins, in her own crazy way, to seek shelter and her own place in the world. Between an illusory desire for motherhood and ways to make ends meet, she spends the hottest days of a torrid Roman summer surrounded by elusive characters with empty lives, yet pure and wonderful like her. In a limbo made up of nothing (and everything), Giulia understands that it is up to her to decide how to live, or not to live, her own life.
They meet in »Le Vieux Belleville«: Minelle, the singer, or Robert Bober, the writer, once Truffaut's assistant director. Basque anarchist Lucio is also a regular at the little restaurant, where time seems to have stood still. This place and the memories of the regulars and their songs which tell of love and struggle are the manifestation of the soul of Belleville, but also of old Paris.
