Synopsis

The intricate mountain road slowly unfolded, bend after bend, never revealing itself in its entirety. The locals said it was a wounded but discreet valley. Suddenly, the villa appeared in the evening. The boy stopped the car and looked at his reflection in the mirror. His hands were shaking. It was the moment of truth. That complex mechanism of levers, springs, and insecurities called Giovanni Cerioni summoned courage and headed toward the gate.There are moments that can revolutionize your life, because they unseat you from the sober routine you're accustomed to and hurl you into places you would never have gone (and which, strangely, speak to you more than the ones you grew up in). For Giovanni, a tall, stooped twenty-seven-year-old engineer accustomed to constantly keeping his gaze down to make sure his feet are firmly planted on the ground—because, as we know, an engineer's greatest fear is flying away—one of those moments is when his exuberant mother Milly, just before she dies, presents him with the ultimate tragedy: the name of his father. Another, equally crucial, moment is when he decides to go look for him, the father he's never known, to fulfill his mother's final wish (or command?): "Ask that asshole to come to the funeral." But Giovanni doesn't yet know, as his finger stumbles on the doorbell of the man's villa, that, once he crosses that gate, nothing will ever be the same for him again. Because by setting foot in the home—and life—of her father, a former star seeking oblivion, she will also enter his world, made of guilt and shriveled secrets, half-truths, unlikely drug dealers, music, stuffed animals, easily addicted priests, swearing, noses that tell of perfect destinies, cats that occasionally think they're lions, and fog. A fog that for some is intrusive and dangerous, easy to get lost in, but for those, like Giovanni, who have shored up their existence with tranquil certainties, it becomes an oxygen that tastes of freedom...