Le vie del Signore sono finite (1987): Cast & Plot

In the fascist era, Camillo, a barber in Acquasalubre, suffers from a psychosomatic disability: his legs fail him despite no organic lesion. The illness is framed as the result of a broken love with Vittoria, a French-born woman who has lived in Italy for a long time. The situation blends personal pain with a society clinging to appearances and normalized hardship, and Camillo’s doctor—who also acts as a psychoanalyst inspired by Freud—fails to win the battle against the patient’s self-doubt, partly because the letters Camillo writes are mishandled by a maid who, shaped by postwar resentments, harbors hostility toward Italians.