Trepidation

Twenty years after the first flowering of his friendship with a girl barely in her teens, a night porter leaves the hotel in Taormina where he works and takes a train north. to Naples, Rome, Milan and finally Paris, where he has a rendezvous in a tiny hotel room on the Rue Carnot. Together, the pair cross the sea to Ireland, where his girlfriend, now a mature woman, has made her home. The long, anxious journey has given the porter time to reflect on the strangeness of his job, his encounters with women, and the odd morality of his Sicilian neighbours. Breathing the fresh air of Ireland gives him a new lease of life, for a few precious weeks. and then he has to make a vital decision. Santino Nerelli's dark, haunting tale of love in two distinct stages has the feel of a black and white movie. Ill health, spoiled relationships and the solitude of the night porter's work cast strong shadows over an existential text which, like life itself, is full of bitter-sweet melodies and secret harmonies.