Human Capital (2013) DVD

Small-time estate agent, Dino (Fabrizio Bentivoglio), seizes a chance to climb the local social-ladder when dropping his beautiful daughter Serena (Matilde Gioli) off to visit her boyfriend Massimiliano (Guglielmo Pinelli) the son of Giovanni Bernaschi (Fabrizio Gifuni), a hot-shot hedge-fund investor, at a large villa on the edge of town. Making up the fourth man in a game of tennis doubles, his natural sporting ability and opportunistic eye provide him an unlikely entrance to a world where making money is both easy and fast. Depending on your access to the right amount of capital, that is. When Giovanni suggests Dino join his latest fund scheme, with a mere 500,000, Dino, is so desperate to be a part of the Bernaschi circle that he puts his own house and business up as collateral.

When a cyclist is the victim of an accidental hit-and-run accident after a school awards ceremony one night just before Christmas the destinies of the two families are catastrophically interwoven. Coinciding with the sudden onset of the financial crisis a situation that threatens the immediate security of the rich and aspiring-rich alike, cracks quickly start to emerge. From the rich and bored wife Carla (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), with misguided aspirations of artistic patronage, to the two misunderstood and emotionally neglected teenagers and Dino s just-pregnant wife, Roberta (Valeria Golino), grappling desperately with the possibility of financial ruin and a daughter in the throes of personal crisis.

Human Capital serves up an absorbing treatise on how the rich can ride roughshod over the little people when their security is threatened, as well as a being a gripping and thrilling drama with a mystery at its center who was driving the jeep that fateful night and what will the consequences be for all involved.