Working Slowly (Radio Alice) (2004) Spoiler-Free Summary – What It's About

In the summer of 1976 Bologna hums with a restless energy that feels both festive and unsettling. The city’s historic streets pulse to the clandestine frequencies of Radio Alice, a pirate wave that blends fantasy, political dissent, sexual freedom and cultural provocation into a soundtrack for a burgeoning student movement. Police patrols keep a wary eye on the makeshift studio tucked away on via del Pratello, yet the broadcast slips through the cracks of authority, offering a glimpse of a world where imagination and rebellion collide.

On the eastern fringe of the city, two friends in their early twenties drift through the monotony of everyday life. Sgualo spends his evenings nursing cheap drinks in a neighborhood bar, while Pelo shares his restless yearning for something beyond the gray routine of the suburbs. Their occasional entanglements with a local fence named Marangon provide just enough cash to keep them afloat, and when a new, daring proposition arrives—digging an underground tunnel toward the Savings Bank in Piazza Minghetti—they seize the chance, despite the obvious risk.

The pair’s night‑long labor beneath the cobblestones is punctuated by the crackle of a portable radio they bring down into the earth. To their surprise, the signal they catch is none other than Radio Alice, the very voice that has been echoing through Bologna’s cafés and squares. The station’s eclectic mix becomes an uncanny soundtrack to the rhythm of pickaxes, turning a solitary, gritty task into a shared, almost ritualistic experience that hints at a larger, invisible community fighting for its own definition of freedom.

As the tunnel deepens, the boys find themselves drawn into the magnetic pull of the broadcast, feeling the thrum of a movement that exists just out of sight. The city above, with its police patrols, student protests and rooftop vistas, begins to feel less like a distant backdrop and more like a living, breathing entity that may soon intersect with their own hidden aspirations.