Human Capital

Italian director Paolo Virzi turns his ire on his country's elite here, relocating Stephen Amidon's novel from Connecticut to the affluent northern town of Brianza. Dividing the story into chapters, Virzi provides different perspectives on an accident involving a waiter cycling home through the snow after a school function. But, for all its thriller elements, this is much more a critique of class, hypocrisy, greed and the decline of the traditional Italian family. Dating teenagers Matilde Gioli and Guglielmo Pinelli quickly discover they have nothing in common. But Gioli's estate agent father, Fabrizio Bentivoglio, desperately wants to belong to the clique presided over by Pinelli's dad, hedge fund manager Fabrizio Gifuni. Each man neglects his wife (pregnant psychologist Valeria Golino and neurotic wannabe actress Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), but it's the low value they set on the lives of those "beneath" them that makes the patriarchs so loathsome and gives this unforgiving saga its edge. Superbly played, designed and photographed, this is a worthy companion to Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty.