I Run To You (2022)

Plot synopsis of I Run To You (2022)

The movie starts with a successful and charming businessman, Gianni, going for a morning run. Although he looks like a sophisticated person, he is a womanizer. He pretends to be different people to date women, usually younger than him.

Later that day, at the country club, his friend Fabio tells everyone how Gianni used three fake identities—all in one week—to meet women. To tease him back, Gianni says maybe Fabio’s wife wants to date him too.

Later, he grabs lunch with his friend Dario, who is also his doctor. Dario asks if all the chasing after women with fake identities isn’t tiring. He suggests his friend settle down with one mature woman, reminding him he’s almost fifty.

Just then, a call interrupts their chat. Gianni mentions it’s about his mom. Dario is delighted, hoping they have reconciled. However, his friend bluntly reveals that his mother has passed away.

After lunch, Gianni rushes to the graveyard but gets lost in a Filipino procession, mistaking it for his mom’s. He throws out a quick fake apology to the family before finding the right spot. His twin brother gives a heartfelt goodbye at the funeral, but Gianni skips his speech.

While explaining his late arrival for the ceremony, he uses sweeping gestures to refer to Filipino people, who usually work as maids, revealing that he’s also a bit of a racist.

After the funeral, Gianni’s brother gives him their mom’s house keys. Inside, family photos make him slightly emotional as he sits in her wheelchair. Soon enough, he switches on her old radio and begins grooving to a song.

Then a young beauty named Alesia sneaks in, startling him. Alesia, the new neighbor, explains she used to help handicapped folks at a nursing home. Seeing him in the wheelchair, she volunteers to help if he needs anything. Gianni, a ferocious player, immediately starts faking being disabled.

The next day at work, we see his ruthless businessman side as he tears into his team during a meeting. He reminds them that his sneaker company, Highspeed, sells a lifestyle—not just shoes.

The new intern, Julia, proposes diversifying marketing with Paralympic athletes to connect with disabled customers. In response, Gianni scoffs, saying his clients are Instagram influencers, not disabled people who barely use one pair of shoes their whole lives. Trying to set an example, he then fires Julia on the spot.

After the meeting, Gianni gets a bag of old clothes from his assistant, Luciana, and rushes back to his late mother’s home. Using his fake handicap, he guilt-trips Alesia into accepting an offer for coffee in his kitchen.

While talking to her over coffee, Gianni learns she’s more into a single, fun life than serious relationships. Slowly, he realizes she’s into outgoing, healthy, and wealthy guys—and his middle-class, handicapped act seems to backfire.

Just as Alesia leaves after coffee, Gianni sees his chance slipping away. He calls out and reveals himself to be the owner of Highspeed, with 148 stores across Europe and a huge villa. Slightly taken aback, Alesia instantly changes her tune and invites him to her country house for lunch the next Sunday.

On Sunday, he arrives at the address but decides to park far away. Seeing the clouds gather, he puts on a raincoat and carefully wheels himself to the house. Inside, he meets Alesia’s family: her grandmother, who is on oxygen support; her brother; and her parents.

Then Alesia’s sister, Chiara, arrives in a car. He’s excited by her beauty but notices she uses a wheelchair, too. Finally, he understands why Alesia invited him—to set him up with her disabled sister, not herself.

After lunch, he and Chiara chat outside. She tells him she loves playing sports and is a professional violin player. Uninterested but trying to be civil, he nods without adding anything from his side.

When Gianni gets back to Rome, he tells his friends about Chiara. His doctor friend Dario asks about her personality, while others ask if she’s hot. He admits she’s beautiful but says he’s not into disabled girls. As the conversation continues, his friend Fabio challenges him to sleep with her. Gianni accepts with a smug grin.

Meanwhile, Alesia visits his mother’s home, wanting to return his raincoat. Instead, she meets his brother, who doesn’t know about Gianni’s lie. She tells him about his brother’s charity work in Botswana and sympathizes with his “disability.” Gianni’s brother is surprised but continues to play along.

Hearing all this, he later confronts his brother about the lie, asking him not to stoop so low. However, Gianni simply deflects the topic by making fun of his baldness.

Before leaving for work the following day, he leaves a voicemail for Chiara, asking her out on Saturday. But to his surprise, Chiara visits him that morning in his office. Realizing he doesn’t have a wheelchair there, he awkwardly sits on his desk.

Chiara informs him that she can’t make it on Saturday, but extends an invitation to watch her tennis tournament for disabled people later that day. Trying to impress her, he makes up a fake story about his company’s support for disabled athletes.

Later that afternoon, Gianni, in his wheelchair, watches Chiara play a hard-fought tennis match and is genuinely impressed. After the match, she invites him to lunch along with her disabled friends. However, the lunch goes differently than he had hoped. Constantly bombarded by questions about his disability from her friends, he feels overwhelmed and even has a nightmare that night.

In the next scene, Gianni flies to Turin, where Chiara performs with her orchestra. He buys an electric wheelchair from a local man and grabs a balcony seat in the theater. For the first time, he is genuinely moved by classical music. After the concert, he surprises Chiara, who asks why he’s in Turin. He lies about being nearby for work and dropping in by accident. Both of them then make their way to an upscale restaurant for dinner.

During dinner, Gianni tries to confess that he lied to her about his disability, but at the last second, he diverts by saying that he lied about being nearby. He admits that he came to Turin to pursue her. However, his clumsiness with the electric wheelchair is obvious to everyone as he keeps bumping against tables throughout the conversation.

After dinner, Chiara takes him to her hotel, where they kiss, but she stops things from going further, disappointing our guy. After returning from Turin, Gianni asks Dario if people with paraplegia get erections—anticipating where the conversation is heading. Dario explains that they do, but for Chiara, pleasure depends on where her spinal injury is. He then suggests Gianni forget about the bed, reminding him he’s forty-nine, not a teenager. However, his friend playfully brushes it off.

In the next scene, Gianni invites Chiara to dinner the following day before driving to pick up the girl he met on his morning run. On the other hand, Chiara has a heartfelt conversation with her sister as the two share a cigarette. She reveals how happy she is that Gianni sees her as a whole woman instead of pitying her.

The next day, Chiara visits Gianni’s huge house. She navigates around the furniture easily while Gianni continuously bumps into things in his wheelchair. During dinner, she asks how he got his legs paralyzed. Gianni makes up a fake story, saying he had a similar accident to Christopher Reeve, the Superman actor. However, Chiara points out that Christopher Reeve was paralyzed from the neck down. Trying to save face, Gianni says he fell off a pony—much to Chiara’s amusement.

Cautiously, she then shares her own story of the horrible car accident. Her passenger only broke his collarbone, and her violin on the next seat didn’t even get scratched, but in a cruel twist of fate, she lost the use of both her legs. Trying to lift the gloomy mood, Gianni unveils a great surprise. He gives her a rubber noodle and asks her to put it around her chest. Then he clicks a button, and water floods the dining room, rising to their chests. Buoyed by the rubber noodles, they float weightlessly in the water. In a moment of passion, they kiss and make love.

However, when the water drains away, Chiara later informs Gianni that she has no feeling below her legs. Visibly emotional but perplexed, Gianni tells her he only felt it on his forehead. When she falls asleep, he takes a selfie of them to boast to his friends. The next day, Gianni shows his friends the photo, winning his bet with Fabio. However, he hides the fact that Chiara couldn’t feel anything. Later that night, we see Fabio’s wife in Gianni’s house. She’s in her nightdress and accidentally breaks a wine glass. Jokingly, she says she’s as clumsy as a disabled person, which offends Gianni. Without revealing the reason, he tells her to get dressed and leave.

Days pass without Gianni and Chiara communicating. Still, we begin to see changes in his outlook on life. He asks Luciana to recall the intern who suggested expanding the company’s marketing to paraplegic athletes. The next day, on his morning run, he calls Chiara and asks to set up a meeting, saying he has an important confession. Following this, he goes to her house. Chiara takes him to her room and asks him to wait while she finishes her violin practice. For the first time since they met, he notices photos of her from before the accident—when she could still use both her legs.

Burdened by the lie, he stands to confess but quickly sits down before she turns around. Noticing that Gianni seems less jittery than usual, Chiara says he’s getting better at using his wheelchair. They kiss, and she asks him about his confession. However, he doesn’t dare to tell her the truth, so he changes the topic.

They share a nervous laugh as she recalls her ex-boyfriend dumping her after her accident. With a heavy heart, Chiara admits that lies and deception hurt her more than her injuries. Hearing this, Gianni grows scared and decides to keep his secret for now.

Chiara then asks him to introduce her to his friends. As a result, he forces Dario and Luciana to come to dinner with them. On the way, Dario suggests Gianni might actually be in love and urges him to confess and end the sham. He even threatens that if Gianni doesn’t tell the truth, either he or Luciana will.

Later, during dinner, Dario pushes his friend to come clean. Seeing him hesitate, he decides to do it himself—just as Gianni “accidentally” spills soup on his suit and sends him to the bathroom. Inside, Dario tells Gianni he must confess because the lie has gone too far. Their conversation is interrupted by a restaurant employee, and in a panic, Gianni pretends to use the toilet to hide the fact that he can walk.

He keeps up the act the entire night, and the truth remains buried. Soon after, Gianni’s brother visits Alesia with flowers and exposes all his lies to her. Furious at the deception, she storms over to Gianni and slaps him. She then gives him a two-day ultimatum to tell Chiara the complete truth.

Later, our hero visits his estranged father, who also turns out to be a womanizer. During a heartfelt conversation, his father admits his regrets about being a lousy husband and urges Gianni not to make the same mistakes—that he must confess the truth before it’s too late.

However, he fears losing her if the truth is exposed—he has genuinely fallen in love with her. Their conversation is interrupted by an announcement about a trip to Lourdes, a famous Catholic site in France whose holy water is rumored to have healing powers. This gives the father and son a crazy idea: Gianni will take Chiara to Lourdes, pretend the water healed his fake disability, and win her back.

Meanwhile, Alesia gently tells her sister that Gianni might not be the best fit for her. Their conversation is cut short by a phone call from Gianni, who invites Chiara to go to Lourdes with him. Surprised, Alesia asks her sister why on earth they’re going to Lourdes. Chiara replies that maybe Gianni wants a miracle to happen.

Fed up with hiding the truth, Chiara shocks her sister by revealing that she already knows Gianni can walk. As someone who uses a wheelchair herself, she recognized his awkwardness right away. Chiara confesses she let the lie continue because it felt good to be loved—even if that love was built on deception.

In the next scene, the group arrives at the Sanctuary of Notre Dame of Lourdes, where they’re greeted by Father Walter, who is also Italian. He asks Gianni to meet him alone inside the cathedral. When Gianni enters, Father Walter calmly tells him he knows he isn’t handicapped. Without waiting for an explanation, the priest warns him not to stand up in front of everyone, saying it could give people false hope and make them believe in false miracles.

Shortly after, Gianni emerges from the cathedral, continuing his fake act. Meanwhile, Chiara unknowingly wanders into the middle of the road as a truck approaches. When Gianni sees the danger, instinct takes over—he jumps up and pulls her out of the way. Though shaken, she plays along, pretending it’s a miracle that he can walk again. She then boards the bus and leaves in tears.

Back in Rome, Gianni’s world begins to crumble piece by piece. At the club, Fabio, aware of his wife’s affair, confronts him. To make matters worse, Luciana resigns from her job. Seeking solace, Gianni visits his mother’s grave and tearfully expresses his love for her. For the first time in his life, he rehires Julia and gives her full responsibility for launching the new ad campaign—the same one she had suggested earlier—featuring disabled athletes.

Desperate to see Chiara, Gianni storms to her parents’ house, where her grandmother confronts him. He pours out his heart, explaining that Chiara won’t return his calls. The old lady retorts that Chiara is too smart to fall for his type—she knows exactly what men like him want. Gianni admits he’s physically fit for his age but mentally a mess. He then professes his love for Chiara and vows to become a better man, accidentally breaking a vase in his passionate outburst.

Moved by his honesty, the old lady reveals that Chiara is catching a bus to the Manati Theater in Spoleto. She gives him the route and timings, adding that he can still catch her at Nami if he hurries. But before he leaves, she warns him that if he ever hurts Chiara again, she won’t hesitate to make his handicap a reality. Thankfully, Gianni reaches the bus before it’s too late. However, Chiara refuses to soften immediately. She reminds him that she doesn’t need anyone’s pity, then completely ignores his pleas and tells the driver to move on.

In the next scene, Gianni is back in Rome, running his heart out—pushed by guilt and heartbreak. He runs until his heart races uncontrollably and finally collapses to his knees. To his surprise, Chiara appears before him in her wheelchair.

When he asks what she’s doing in Rome, she smiles and mimics his old excuse: she was “just passing by” and decided to look for running trails in the city. Choosing to let go of the past, she embraces him, and together they laugh through tears. She then playfully pulls him onto her lap as they share a tender moment. In the final scene, Gianni, his brother (now dating Alesia), and Chiara’s family gather to celebrate his 50th birthday. As the music swells, Gianni lifts Chiara in his arms and dances slowly with her.

Video Recap of I Run To You (2022)