Giovanni, Paola, and their teenage children Irene and Andrea, live in a small town in Northern Italy.
Giovanni is a psychiatrist. Day after day, his patients confide in him, the endless details of their neuroses contrasting sharply with his own ordered life. Giovanni's existence is one of strictly observed habits: he reads, listens to music, exhausts himself with long, lonely runs across town.
One morning, Giovanni receives an urgent call from a patient and is unable to go running with his son as he had planned. Andrea goes diving with friends instead. He will not return...