Synopsis

Piedmont, 1949, a handful of houses surrounded by rice paddies as far as the eye can see, dotted here and there with farmhouses: this is Rondò di Risera, a small village in the Vercelli province that fills up every year in early summer with rice weeders. Like Loredana Lunardon, young and beautiful, who manages to survive the poverty of her hometown of Polesine thanks to her work in the rice paddies. She's hard not to notice, and in fact she doesn't escape the admiring glances of the men of Rondò, including the doctor Massimo Gregori and the landowner Giacinto Aglietti, two fishing companions considered great friends by the other patrons of the local tavern, even though Dr. Gregori, a shy and solitary man, prefers to keep his distance from the exuberant and somewhat uncouth Aglietti. But when, after the hustling, he disappears without a trace, his wife turns to the doctor, as well as the priest, for help in finding and bringing her husband home after what is supposed to be a romantic elopement. Gregori agrees to help her and, in the meantime, find a place for her and her daughters that will safeguard the family's good name. But he doesn't know that this disappearance will bring unexpected and dramatic changes to the lives of many people, ones that will affect him very closely.