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Rating: "Il capitale umano," the latest film by Paolo Virzì, currently on the big screen, is a good film and worth watching at the cinema.
Dino Ossola (Fabrizio Bentivoglio, as good as ever but perhaps a bit stereotypical and caricatured here) is the father of Serena (Matilde Gioli, an actress by chance, a newcomer, she did well and is also very pretty), the girlfriend of Massimiliano (Guglielmo Pinelli, a very handsome and muscular young man but quite lacking as an actor), who is the son of Giovanni Bernaschi (Fabrizio Gifuni, extraordinary, probably his best performance), a ruthless shark of high finance, extremely wealthy, extremely powerful, the legitimate great-nephew of His Majesty Money (cit.). Dino, taking advantage of the fact that his daughter is with a Bernaschi, wants to enter the elite circle, he also wants to "speculate" even at the cost of risking everything... Around these characters hovers a mysterious and tragic car accident. A waiter, who was returning home at night on a bicycle, is hit by a large car, possibly a SUV, which might be the car of Bernaschi's son...
In a bleak and bare Brianza, the stories of these characters intertwine, creating a solid dramatic film with noir undertones.
Based on the novel of the same name by Stephen Amidon, an American writer who sets his story in Connecticut, the film, echoing the narrative structure of the famous "The Killing" by Stanley Kubrick, tells the story by repeating it multiple times from the perspective of the various characters and enriching it, with each passage, with details and information aimed at completing the final puzzle and unraveling the mystery of the car accident.
The idea is successful, the film engages and rarely bores, but it is not the mystery of the accident that is the main plot of the film; rather, it is the human relationships. Seeing the same scene with or without that character, and what they say to each other when so-and-so is there or when he leaves… The masks we wear every day depending on the person or people we interact with.
How a man's dignity and personality are diminished in the face of the cult of money and submission to Power: look at your guests, how happy they are (says Bernaschi's wife - another very interesting figure, well portrayed by Valeria Bruna Tedeschi)...they would be happy even if you served them dog food.
In this instance, Virzì leaves irony and provincialism at home, does not emphasize dialects and a snapshot of small-town Italy, but tackles an ambitious film and succeeds in the challenge.
A must-see.
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