A French writer born in Italy, Luca Morandi is forty years old and no longer knows where his allegiances lie. Should they be with France, his adopted country that fed, housed and raised him? Or should they be with Italy, his land of birth, a place idealized, fantasized about and made legendary as in a child’s dream? Today Luca is going through a crisis: he’s no longer Italian, no longer French, no longer anything.

His father, a famous plastic surgeon, dies suddenly. Luca returns to Turin with his sister Isabella for the funeral. But the funeral, this mourning period that was supposed to make an adult of Luca, turns into a nightmare. He’s confronted by widows, unknown mistresses, new brothers and sisters, a mountain of debts, a changed, new, “Berlusconiland” Italy without a memory. Luca rediscovers the country of his childhood and, with it, his own life, but with an adult’s eyes. Nothing now exerts the spell it once did, except perhaps Lilla, his childhood sweetheart who he bumps into at a sports stadium. Luca tries, but doesn’t manage to mourn, constantly haunted by the shadow of this father so in love with life, women and red sports cars. From hatred to love, resentment to forgiveness, Luca must also redefine the rules and meanings of his own identity and existence, and reconcile the France that he carries inside himself with his native Italy. On both sides of the Alps, life is sweet and beautiful.