One of the most underseen films in Monteiro’s career is also one of his most beautiful. In an implicit homage to Piero della Francesca and the Italian Renaissance (beautifully photographed by Acácio de Almeida), Laura Morante stars as a Tuscan translator who returns to Portugal with her children one year after her husband died on the country’s sun-drenched southern coast. As the ghost of her husband haunts their home’s white walls, the whole region is on edge after the assassination of Issam Sartawi, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization who had travelled there. When she finds a wounded man (Philip J. Spinelli) drifting by the beach, a tortured, sensual attraction grows between them while political violence, conspiracies, and personal grief weigh on the fragile possibilities of a new love.