Antonio, who fled Naples many years ago, has built a family and a successful career in Milan, far from his mother Angela, a woman who is over-the-top for better or worse, irresistible, old-fashioned, and hostile like few others, who joined him for Christmas and seems determined to stay.
The Christmas Eve dinner thus becomes an emotional battleground, simultaneously comical and ferocious, that brings to light a past of oppression and misunderstanding.