Hidden by his sharp wit, worldly charm and inspiring music, there's a cynical, egoistic strain behind how Jeremy sees those around him. The Italian villagers reject this morally grey Londoner, but a few of them secretly see him as useful to their purposes.

¿¿¿¿Jeremy tries to dismiss the thinly veiled intolerance of the pious and bigoted locals when he arrives in the small Italian village in the summer of 1995. He hunkers down in a dilapidated Renaissance villa just outside it, preoccupied after a recent road accident with recovering his form as an oboe soloist for an upcoming concert tour.

The struggling musician is forced to replace his natural talent on the oboe with gruelling practice-a torture he endures alone until his reclusion is infringed upon. The Catholic priest wants to pull him back into the Church that his mother's pious fanaticism made him despise. His fixation on the village beauty makes him question his integrity when they meet on her road to self-discovery. In the villa's immediate orbit, the shepherd's unsavoury son and the belligerent olive grower doubt his sincerity and put it inescapably to the test.

Jeremy wants to be trusted. When he can rein in his single-minded impulses, his deceptive charm could even be seen as likeable. So thinks his provocative lover, the opera diva he invites from London to relieve mounting frustration in this attempt at rural retreat. But she incites his repressed compulsions and duplicity until he can no longer control himself.

The psychological tension in the tragic bonds formed in this story puts personal integrity on a tightrope strained by the people who walk on it with very imbalanced agendas.