Gian, a 65-year-old ethnomusicology professor, fights the darkness caused by the sudden onset of amnesia. Flashes of the past, that blend with hazy archive footage, haunt his mind like a phantasmagoria of images. Despairing, Gian tries to end things, but he fails. In the aftermath, Miriam, the daughter he does not recognize, moves into his apartment with her son Elyas. She helps him find a diary written into his twenties that revolves around Leila, a girl with whom he discovers love in the space of one night. This emotion exacerbates Gian’s pain but pushes him to recover his memory.
In Rome it hasn’t rained for three years and the lack of water is overturning rules and habits. Through the city dying of thirst and prohibitions moves a chorus of people, young and old, marginalised and successful, victims and profiteers. Their lives are linked in a single design, while each seeks his or her deliverance.
Lodo is twenty years old and lives the difficulties of his age, between a difficult relationship with his father and the attempt to conquer Giulia, his roommate with whom he is madly in love. He performs with the MOB, an indie band, in a legendary Roman club: the Morrison. One day, by chance, Lodo's path crosses that of Libero Ferri, a former rock star with a stalemate career, who tries to find success but ends up withdrawing more and more in himself, neglecting his beautiful wife Luna and living isolated in his luxurious villa full of memories. Between dreams, failures, friendship, tormented loves and curious characters, their meeting will become a mutual stimulus to move forward, but at times also a difficult comparison between generations and very different ways of being.
Based on the tragicomedy written by Edoardo de Filippo in 1931, Christmas at the Cupiello's captures a life episode of a middle-class Italian family around Christmas. Shot in Neapolitan language, the movie has a whimsical charm.