Stephen Amidon’s prescient 2004 novel Human Capital has been transplanted from its original Connecticut setting to the blandly prosperous environs of Milan, and the result is a very watchable multiple-point-of-view drama. It may be no more than the sum of its parts, and the slightly soap-operatic finale doesn’t entirely distract your attention from untied plot threads, but there is some great fancy footwork in the narrative and fierce satirical strokes that recall Tom Wolfe. A cyclist is knocked down in a hit-and-run incident, uniting two families who have already drawn together by greed. Fabrizio Bentivoglio plays Dino, an estate agent consumed with envy for the lifestyle of his neighbours, hedge-fund manager Giovanni (Fabrizio Gifuni) and his wife, Carla (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), whose spoilt teen son, Massi (Guglielmo Pinelli), has been dating Dino’s daughter, Serena (Matilda Gioli). Poor, dopey Dino begs to be allowed to invest his family’s entire wealth in one of Giovanni’s high-yield VIP schemes, and disaster inevitably follows. Money worship and status anxiety combine to create a toxic atmosphere of anxiety, embodied most by poor Carla, whose own ambitions to be a stage star have been mislaid in the rush for money and comfort. It’s a shrewd portrait of a rapacious, unhappy society.