When Gabriele Rossetti returns to his small town in southern Italy to say goodbye to his dying father, the old man’s last words reawaken a memory from the forgotten past. The father had worked as the local railway station chief, but his thwarted ambition had always been to paint. The resulting mood swings, taken out on Gabriele’s mother and on the peace and quiet of an otherwise tranquil family life, were the only shadows in young Gabriele’s childhood, leading him to seek refuge in his vivid fantasy, as well as in the much less problematic company of a young bachelor uncle who lives with the family and knows how to enjoy himself. But then, in the course of the preparations for the funeral, Gabriele spends a night in the home where he grew up, discovering a truth about his father that he never would have imagined, and which radically alters his view of his eccentric parent.