Dino Ossola (Fabrizio Bentivoglio), a sleazy 50 year old realtor, wants to use the relationship between his daughter and the son of a rich Milanese investment banker to improve his career. Carla Bernaschi (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), the banker’s ethereous wife, spends her idle time shopping until she comes upon a theater facing bankrupcy and decides to make it her mission to save it. Serena Ossola (Matilde Gioli), the realtor’s daughter, is about to fall in love with someone else when a fateful car accident reminds her of everyone she is dependent on. The story develops alongside these three characters till the nasty conclusion coined “Il Capitale Umano,” a term denoting the calculation of a person’s worth in the insurance industry.

Paoli Virzì transplants author Stephen Amidon’s intricate plot from Connecticut to Northern Lombardy against the background of the financial crisis. Virzì depicts a believable crisis in the country that originated the terms giro, balance, and net worth. The film is reminiscent of Luca Gaudagnino’s I AM LOVE. In that film an affair between the lesbian daughter and a cook/wife threatens to destroy the patrician family from within and in Virzì’s film the marble white villa and the hedge fund of the Bernaschi’s fluctuate in tandem with the financial world’s exchange rates. More than a million Italians have already seen the film which clearly shows that IL CAPITALE UMANO struck a nerve. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi won the best actress award at the Tribeca Festival as the dreamy yet firm wife in addition to the film winning seven Donatello Awards.

Raphaël Ruck

Translation: Elinor Lewy