Italia, near Lake Como. The Bernaschi has a fortune that echoes across the local community. Giovanni spends his life managing the capital, while his wife Carla hides her boredom as best she can. Thanks to his daughter – the girlfriend of the Bernaschi’s only son – Dino Ossola, a simple real estate agent, gets access to the great court, convinced he has finally found a way to get rich. But over the course of a few months, the global economic crisis and a car accident turn the lives of both families upside down.

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Murder, betrayal, sex, money, manipulation: Human Capital, adapted from the novel by Stephen Amidon, brings out the heavy artillery to give life to this great family saga that bears witness to an Italy knocked down by the global crisis that is traumatizing the modern world. Divided into chapters named after the various characters, this movie by Paolo Virzì benefits from a well-oiled and efficient machine that is multi-faceted: at the same time thriller, drama and romance. Its problem is an uneven rhythm and a gallery of wooden characters who attempt to offer depth within the limits of their frame – casting Valeria Bruni Tedeschi as yet another bored and unhappy bourgeois is not very imaginative. Far from being a bitter portrait of a society cut off from itself, Human Capital plays out too easily, doing its best not to bother its characters nor its audience.