Writing
Pietro is driving to Puglia with Jacopo, his autistic son, when their car suddenly breaks down. They are helped by Oliviero, a local mechanic, and are able to stay with Agata, who owns a bar that once rented out rooms. Gaia, who helps Agata run the bar, develops a close relationship with Pietro. The pace of life in the small village is very slow and monotonous, like a long wait for something to happen, until something distressing does, stopping Pietro and Jacopo from resuming their journey.
20-year-old Marco is remarkably attuned to the suffering of people everywhere. He writes poetry but turns to drugs and drink to achieve “the forgetting”, that unconscious state that is impenetrable to his existential angst and other fears. He’s fleeing pain but above all, he’s fleeing from himself. When he goes to work for the cleaners’ cooperative at Bambin Gesù Hospital, he’s sure that this experience, the contact with sick children, will be the death of him.
