An antiques dealer known for auctioning off masterpieces is contacted by a young agoraphobic woman who lives as a recluse in an old villa.

Virgil Oldman, an elegant old bachelor who’s never had a relationship with a woman and who can’t even look them in the eye, lives in Florence as a reputable antiques dealer. He organizes prestigious auctions, during which he illegally acquires masterpieces by Renoir, Caravaggio, Goya, Modigliani, Raphael and Rubens – all paintings of women that he hangs in a secret room in his house. One day, this neurotic misanthrope is thrown for a loop when he is contacted by Claire, a young agoraphobic woman who lives as a recluse in an old villa: she wants him to appraise some art work she inherited from her parents. First they only communicate by phone, then through the walls of her house. Claire doesn’t have contact with the outside world, and Virgil becomes obsessed by her...

Giuseppe Tornatore, the maker of Cinema Paradiso and Malena, enters territory marked out by Brian De Palma, Alfred Hitchcock and Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige. He offers a suspenseful hour and 30 minutes, telling the story of a cultured, cold and meticulous man who discovers love with a capital "L". Unfortunately, the movie itself goes on much longer than that – for a whole 130 minutes – with the last part of the movie unveiling some extremely contrived plots in the script. But nevertheless, what remains is a refined and clever film that makes a nice change from the dumb comic book adaptations that have monopolized our screens for far too long.