Roberto, a young, timid law school student (Jean-Louis Trintignant, left) meets the brash, devil-may-care, 40-ish Bruno (Vittorio Gassman, below), and they both abandon their obligations for two days of driving around Italy, buddy-bonding and having picaresque adventures.
Of course, they are attracted to each other: that's the whole point. They just have to sublimate it through discussions of girls and their lack of interest.
Their idyll ends in sudden tragedy -- a convention of the 1960s commedia alla italiana, but also a way of punishing Roberto for his "deviance," choosing homoerotic freedom over a "respectable" life with a job, a house, a wife, and kids.
Vittorio Gassman, one of the greats of the Italian theater, had a few gay-subtext movies, such as Big Deal on Madonna Street with Renato Salvatori.