After the marriage between a woman from Italy's north and a schoolteacher from Italy's south fails due to deep-seated differences in culture and tradition, the husband forcibly kidnaps his two young sons from the home of his estranged wife's parents and sets out on the road with them in a VW Beetle. Their low-key journey, set to songs from the period, is interspersed with flashbacks to happier times (including home movies in colour), while flash-forwards reveal the sons as adults, looking back on this memorable summer.