Director: Paolo Virzi | Italy| Fiction | 2014 | 110 mins
Film source: Film Movement
Sponsor: Vermont Italian Club
The term “human capital” is legalese that designates an accident victim’s net worth in compensation claims. Here it defines the Bernaschi family, elegant capitalists, and the Ossolas – struggling middle-classers. The film’s prologue reveals a worker cleaning up a banquet hall and who leaves early to bike home on a cold winter night before being hit by an SUV. Three chapters follow, each telling different parts of the story of the accident’s cause and aftermath from the viewpoint of a different character. Each chapter layers on new information that deepens—and sometimes upends—our understanding of the main characters. One segment often brings words or actions that played out in the background of another to the foreground, revealing that they meant something very different than we had first assumed. But the film is more than just a very chic thriller: it is a nuanced account of desire, greed and the value of human life in an age of rampant capitalism and financial manipulation.