A dazzling comedy with a poignant streak set in the Rome and Bologna of the 1920s. It tells the story of Nello Balocchi (
Neri Marcorè), 35, a shy and clumsy man devoted to the academic world, sent by his father -- a pragmatic businessman and womanizer who happens to be the Pope's tailor -- to teach at a high school in Bologna in the hope that living in such an emancipated city will allow him to find a wife at last, thus giving the family its eagerly awaited heir.
On reaching Bologna, Nello goes to live in a
pensione run by Arabella (
Sandra Milo) where he shares a room with a Neapolitan barber, thanks to whose advice he gradually gets to know the fairer sex. While he discovers that he has a great talent for teaching, the search for a soulmate is unsuccessful. Until the day he finds himself at a tea dance in a home for blind women, by chance or sent there by Providence. There, Nello meets a "femme fatale," Angela Gardini (
Vanessa Incontrada), the most beautiful and open-minded young woman in all Bologna, who turns his life upside-down.