Third World Romance

Claire, a Catholic schoolteacher living in Italy, rushes to the hospital when her teenage daughter Robin, a mute piano prodigy, is critically injured in a bike accident. Claire picks up a keepsake bracelet dropped by Robin and prays with it in the hospital's chapel. Claire and her estranged ex-husband Luca return to Robin's room where their daughter is pronounced dead. Claire puts the bracelet around Robin's wrist and she suddenly comes back to life despite being brain dead for 20 minutes. Robin begins speaking for the first time since she was five years old. However, Robin also begins exhibiting unusual behavior both at home and at school, including choking a classmate, which gets her expelled. At the same time, Claire begins seeing strange visions, such as imagining insults written on papers turned in by her students, and an old scar on her forearm starts bleeding again. Claire takes Robin back to the hospital for additional testing, but Dr. Stancik finds nothing unusual. While discussing her near-death experience on their drive home, Robin cryptically asks Claire, "How come you didn't ask if I saw her?" Claire tells Luca about Robin's question, but Luca dismisses it by claiming Robin doesn't remember the unidentified incident. Claire turns to Father Sergio for the church's help dealing with Robin, but the priest merely contacts Luca. Luca ends up taking Robin to live with his new family temporarily. Claire attends a support group for survivors of near-death experiences. As part of a debate about the afterlife being a place of light or a place of darkness, group leader Dr. Ben Romano indicates the hereafter is often associated with repressed emotional trauma. A vision of Robin seemingly attempts to drown Claire in a pool. Claire's confused friend Viv rescues her. Luca soon calls Claire to let her know Robin went missing. Recent events compel Claire to revisit a traumatic memory. Claire recalls how she drove away with her twin daughters Robin and Rose when they were five years old after a marriage-ending argument with Luca. Frustrated by Rose's backseat tantrum, Claire swerved to avoid a collision and drove into water. Claire managed to save Robin, but Rose drowned. The incident left Claire with a forearm scar while Robin went mute. Claire returns to Dr. Ben Romano. Claire asks Ben if guilt and past sins can become demons as she theorizes Robin somehow brought Rose back from the other side. Claire mentions how her family never talks about Rose, as though she didn't exist. Having been located, Robin is brought to the hospital in a comatose state with her body decomposing. Meanwhile, Claire prepares to commit suicide by overdosing on pills and submerging herself in an ice bath. Claire's suicide attempt triggers a near-death experience where she relives the car accident with her twin daughters. In the vision, Claire reunites with Rose, which leads to another moment where two Claires embrace each other as a symbol of Claire forgiving herself. Claire clutches Rose's bracelet, which she subsequently gave to Robin. After all three of them embrace, Rose puts Claire and Robin's hands together before turning to walk back to the water in the hereafter. Worried because she didn't answer her phone, Ben rushes to Claire's place with paramedics who revive her. Simultaneously, Robin miraculously recovers in the hospital. Everyone's lives return to normal in the aftermath. (thanks to culturecrypt)