After Years Spent Working As A Prostitute In Her Italian Village, Middle-aged Mamma Roma Has Saved Enough Money To Buy Herself A Fruit Stand So That She Can Have A Respectable Middle-class Life And Reestablish Contact With The 16-year-old Son She Abandoned When He Was An Infant. But Her Former Pimp Threatens To Expose Her Sordid Past, And Her Troubled Son Seems Destined To Fall Into A Life Of Crime And Violence.