For this film Monicelli was awarded with a David di Donatello for Best Director and a Nastro d'Argento in the same category.

[1] Elena Leonardi lives apart from her husband, with her younger daughter, a niece, a housemaid who has a daughter of the same age, and her husband's senile old uncle, in a rural farmhouse in the country.

Her husband returns to propose a big renovation project to build a modern SPA, but she cannot offer her support because of the farm's severe economic situation and his history of failed business ideas and debts.

The husband dies in a car accident that was partially caused by exasperation that the family doesn't take him seriously, in business or in the education of his daughters, one of whom he has just found in bed with yet another fiancé she had just brought home the day before.

The grieving family decides to sell off the whole property, pay off the debts, and split up: some would move to Rome, the senile uncle would be tricked to stay in a hospice, the older daughter would get married, and the housemaid would finally follow her husband who had emigrated in Australia many years earlier.