Il ritratto

Valeria Costas, a globally acclaimed and translated writer, has dedicated her life to her books and to her great love, the well-known entrepreneur Martín Aclà. She lives alone in Paris, while Martín lives in London with his wife and children-the two have been lovers for more than twenty-five years, and no one knows about them.
When Valeria finds out from the radio that Martín has had a stroke, her world collapses. The idea of losing him is devastating. She must find a way to reach him, be with him, save him, or at least say goodbye. So she ventures into a clumsy and reckless plan: she commissions her own portrait from Martín’s wife, the painter Isla Lawndale, and through this lie manages to insinuate herself into their home.
In the large, chaotic mansion in central London where the man they love lies in a coma, Valeria and Isla stand before each other, fascinated and intimidated by each other. Does Isla know who the woman sitting across from her really is? Will Valeria tell her that Martín had just asked her to spend the next few years together? And what has Antonia, Isla and Martín’s teenage daughter, figured out about her father’s double life.
Day after day, during portrait sessions, Valeria and Isla study each other and begin to tell their stories, creating an ever-deepening intimacy, unfolding their fragility and strength. In another version of the story, perhaps, they would have been friends. In this one they might still be in time to help each other.
Lies, memories and secrets chase each other and intertwine in a moving and luminous dance of passion and compassion. The portrait is a hymn to life and a love song, brought forth by two immense and vulnerable characters who, on the threshold of the precipice, collapse and rise again, with pain and with grace, as the love of their lives and all they thought they were is disappearing.