QMI

A neo-noir set in the New York City's corrupt contemporary art world where the art dealer John Kaplan and the ruthless head of New York's mafia, Michael Rubino, fight for money, art, power and love.

In a small suburb on the outskirts of Rome, the cheerful heat of summer camouflages a stifling atmosphere of alienation. From a distance, the families seem normal, but it’s an illusion: in the houses, courtyards and gardens, silence shrouds the subtle sadism of the fathers, the passivity of the mothers and the guilty indifference of adults. But it’s the desperation and repressed rage of the children that will explode and cut through this grotesque façade, with devastating consequences for the entire community.

Lodo is twenty years old and lives the difficulties of his age, between a difficult relationship with his father and the attempt to conquer Giulia, his roommate with whom he is madly in love. He performs with the MOB, an indie band, in a legendary Roman club: the Morrison. One day, by chance, Lodo's path crosses that of Libero Ferri, a former rock star with a stalemate career, who tries to find success but ends up withdrawing more and more in himself, neglecting his beautiful wife Luna and living isolated in his luxurious villa full of memories. Between dreams, failures, friendship, tormented loves and curious characters, their meeting will become a mutual stimulus to move forward, but at times also a difficult comparison between generations and very different ways of being.

Mr. Imbruttito, a leading executive of a large multinational, lives the routine in his hectic Milan. Breaking this balance is Brusini, an eccentric entrepreneur at the head of an economic empire, who for an absurd reason blows up what for the Brutito is the business of life. For the first time, the Ugly one feels the pinch, falls into depression, can no longer find a reason to wake up in the morning. The turning point comes from Brera, a longtime friend, who proposes to the Bruttito the purchase of a Chiringuito in Sardinia, to do business in flip-flops and finally be able to say: "I quit everything and open a chiringuito!"

Hillary Clinton, Roberto Saviano, Jonathan Franzen and others weigh-in on the Elena Ferrante "craze" and what makes her work - and her mysterious persona - so uniquely captivating.