安东尼奥在米兰建立了自己的家庭和一份成功的事业，远离了他的母亲安吉拉。安吉拉是一个无论善恶都极为夸张的女人，充满魅力又守旧敌意，这次特意来和儿子共度圣诞。平安夜的晚餐因此变成了一座充满情绪、既滑稽又激烈的战场，让过往的种种误解重新浮现。这个夜晚最终演变为一场母子之间的清算，注定要改变他们情感纽带的意义：那是一种如烈火般在内心深处燃烧的爱。

Pauline, a beguiling woman in her 60s, returns to her hometown, Turin, for the first time since she was ten years old. She has inherited her aunt’s apartment in town. In Turin Pauline contacts Dr. Angela Gualtieri, a psychologist whom she had met abroad some time before; Angela runs a maternity centre, the Melograno, a support centre where both mothers to be and young mothers with post natal depression seek help. At the Melograno they are constantly short of help, that’s why Angela asks Pauline to give her a hand in setting up an in-house archive collecting different material relating to maternity: video interviews to new mothers, mothers diaries, photo portraits of mother and child. Pauline accepts and starts her work plunging deep in an emotional material that touches her strongly: the controversial feelings experienced by women in their relation with the child.