The Jewel

“As with The Girl by the Lake, this story took me into the Italian provinces which, in this case, too, became silent spectators of a crime,” states Andrea Molaioli, commenting on the theme of his second feature film. The drama The Jewel, however, isn’t about a murder, but about crime as a symptom of our era. Inspired by a real case of financial scandal involving the multinational dairy concern Parmalat, Andrea Molaioli co-wrote and directed a reconstruction of the meteoric rise and precipitous fall of the major food processing company Leda, directed by prominent entrepreneur Amanzio Rastelli and his trusted right-hand man, accountant Ernesto Botta (Remo Girone and Toni Servillo). The organism of a company which enjoyed glittering success in the early 1990s is gradually poisoned by unscrupulous pragmatism and contempt for financial market regulations. Like Francesco Rosi in The Mattei Affair (1972), whom Molaioli cites as a source of inspiration, the filmmakers behind The Jewel also attempt to make a connection between a psychological analysis of their characters and their scrutiny of a serious social problem in relation to the given sociological context.