La Dolce Vita — never actually all that sweet - gone properly sour. Open with an overhead shot of the cleanup following a swanky Italian gala. An employee mounts his bicycle and heads for home, only to be struck by a speeding SUV. There's your disaster, but on whose head will it fall? The striving, wheedling real-estate agent? His unhappy, isolated daughter? Her poor-little-rich-kid boyfriend? The boyfriend's neglected, numbed mother? Her incautious tycoon of a husband? Or perhaps someone else altogether? We'll have to run through multiple storylines to find out, tracing the journeys of agent, daughter, and mother to the fateful gala. Of course, the dead guy with a bike isn't really the point, unless you decide he's there to represent what happens to the working man when he bumps up against the machinations of the new-and-improved global economy. The point is portraying a society that is bankrupt in all sorts of ways, sometimes even financially. Director Paolo Virzi (The First Beautiful Thing) brings considerable style to the proceedings, and gets sterling camera work from the tag-team of Jerome Almeras and Simon Beaufils. In front of the lens, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi is particularly touching as the mom, just as Fabrizio Bentivoglio is particularly repellent as the agent. (2013) — Matthew Lickona
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