Vecchia domestica
Elba island, 1814. Martino is a young teacher, idealist and strongly anti Napoleon, in love with the beautiful and noble Baroness Emily. The young man finds himself serving as librarian to the Great Emperor in exile, whom he deeply hates, yet soon begins recording Napoleon's memoirs, getting to know and learning to value the man behind the myth. Among seductions and affairs, expectations and fears, he will craft a precise portrait that nevertheless will not manage to hide a final, inevitable, disappointment.
Donnina
In a shabby residence on the coast between Livorno and Pisa, Mario, known as "Il Cormorano", a grumpy and disillusioned young man, works as a plumber to scrape together the sum necessary to realize his dream. He wants to join his uncle Piero in America to become an underground musician. His story is intertwined with that of Nevio, the cynical manager of the residence, of Gabriella, his naive and dreamy lover and of the maid Gaia who behind has a past as a drug addict, with whom Mario has a relationship of hate love. But reality is not as rosy as dreams:
Bruna
A failed restaurant owner on the brink of suicide is suddenly treated with extreme deference and kindness by a group of strangers who host him in their home, no less! Truth is they have mistaken him for the government agent they were waiting for and treat him well only to get allowance for their floundering ostrich-breeding business.
Mara's grandmother
From childhood to fatherhood, Piero learns things the hard way while growing up in a working-class neighborhood of Livorno.
