Cesare is a seventy-seven-year-old widower and cynical troublemaker, a man who has always had trouble caring for others and has given up trying. Aside from an intermittent fling with a mature nurse called Rossana, who moonlights as a sex worker, he prefers to live his own life, avoiding contact with his neighbors and even his own children wherever possible. Then, one day, the enigmatic Emma moves into a neighboring flat. Emma is married to a strange and sinister man...a man who seems so different from her. As Cesare investigates and starts to uncover the truth of their relationship, he rediscovers an appetite for life-and soon finds himself risking everything for a future he had never thought possible.