Italy, at the end of the second world war. Liliana, a widow, is forced to leave her hometown Bologna, along with her son Nino, because of severe financial hardships. The two of them move to Puglia, and go live in her brother-in-law Giordano’s farmhouse. Giordano, the brother of Liliana’s late husband, had in his youth been madly in love with her. Their arrival wreaks havoc in the life of the fragile Giordano, and upsets the usual farmstead routine, it also awakens the bitterness in the souls of his two elderly aunts, Suntina and Eugenia, who still bear an intense grudge against Liliana’s family...