The Italian Writer (2007)

In the future, Joseph enters a bookshop searching for an Italian writer. While he searches for the name "Firenze" in the database, he recounts the story of a woman he had met 30 years ago. Lisbon, 2007: Joseph is a tormented American seminarian, a member of Opus Dei, who has come to Lisbon to help organize an exhibition of the Franciscan Order in Lisbon's Cathedral. The exhibition brings to Portugal a legendary mirror, "The Mirror of St. Francis of Assisi", that was said to have allowed St Francis to see the next morning. On the day of his departure, Joseph, at the train station, literally bumps into Giulia, a beautiful and irreverent Italian writer with whom he establishes an immediate chemistry. Giulia tells Joseph she came to Lisbon to try to find a mysterious Portuguese singer with whom her father had a relationship in Lisborn before he left to fight for the Portuguese in their colonial war. In the final letters this woman had sent to Giulia's father, her passion and feeling of abandonment seemed to be driving her to insanity. She was obviously unaware that an accident of war left her loving soldier with no memories of his past and unable to respond. Giulia came to Lisbon to bring the tragic news of her father's death and to return her the letters... but the singer seems to have disappeared. Joseph, fascinated by her story, suggests that he and Giulia take advantage of the 12-hour delay of their trains, caused by the Pope's visit to Portugal, to try to find the lost singer. The two depart on a journey around Lisbon, and discover a mystical city where they experience an adventure of mutual discovery, of attraction, of secrets and revelations and of intimacy and desire. Seemingly, the loneliest boy in the world has met the saddest girl and they can only fail to share a future together, yet, both with a tragic past, the new revelations and the old secrets draw them even closer. Then Giulia promises Joseph: "If one day you find my book, you'll find me as well."