Ivano De Matteo wrote (with Valentina Ferlan) and directed this tough little film that takes a bit out of contemporary mores and serves is up as 'dinner'. It is classy in every aspect, the only exception being the crime that turns out to be the denouement of the story. It is a story about two brothers and their wives, and the interactions between them and their two high school age children. And the consequences that occur when the kids get into serious trouble together e manner in which the parents' relationships change with and among each other.
The well scripted synopsis states, 'THE DINNER turns an ordinary meal among family into a taut morality play as the limits of polite society are tested and two brothers discover just how little they know about each other. To Massimo (Alessandro Gassman), a gutsy defense attorney, the monthly dinners with his pediatrician brother Paolo (Luigi Lo Cascio) and their wives at a posh local restaurant are a status symbol, even if the time is spent in forced familiarity and inconsequential conversation about the latest films, the day's news or their children's schoolwork. When Paolo's wife Clara (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) sees disturbing security camera footage of a homeless woman being mercilessly beaten, she worries it may be her teenage son Michele (Jacopo Olmo Antipori) and his cousin, Massimo's daughter Benni (Rosabell Laurenti Sellers), who are responsible for the gruesome attack. Their fragile balancing act of respectability and class now shattered, the two families navigate the repercussions of this senseless assault, revealing in the process the skewed priorities and moral shortcomings of their privileged, insulated perspectives.
This is a film that is beautifully scripted and acted and offers a fine reminder of how fine Italian films can be.
