Leo and Marta. Gustavo and Anna. Two couples meet on the fringes of a post-industrial northern Italian city. Leo is a young writer, struggling to make a name for himself. Marta is a beautiful woman who is trying to set up an art gallery and whose outer methodical efficiency conceals unresolved contradictions. Their indecisive relationship doesn't dare look into the future, contenting itself with an emotionally barren present. Gustavo is a 50-year-old industrialist whose marriage to Anna, a neurotic translator, is both awkward and perverse. Things are occasionally tense between the four of them, but Anna - gentle and submissive Anna - charms Leo with her alluring and welcoming femininity and so highlights the problems of the apparently more stable couple in a sort of mirror game. In one huge, final misunderstanding, Leo and Marta are unable to find the words to "hang on", even though they love each other. Gustavo and Anna stay together in their sterile life of alcohol, betrayals, tranquillizers and maternity fetishes. Winter is a film on the difficulty of relationships for single people and couples, set against the grey background of a society devoid of passion, obsessed by fashion and money.

(Source: Rai Trade)