Il ministro (2016)

Franco Lucci is a businessman on the brink of ruin, and his relationship with his wife Rita is difficult and severely strained. To prevent his company from going under for good, he invites the Honorable Rolando Giardi, a minister he met some time ago, to dinner. Thanks to Giardi, the company might be saved by winning a public contract. Franco and his business partner Michele (who is also his brother-in-law) have arranged an evening in which they plan to offer the minister a bribe and sweeten the deal with a woman who will sleep with him. However, the woman they chose is hit by a car shortly before heading to dinner, so she is replaced by Zhen, a Chinese student nearing graduation and skilled in burlesque, who at certain points seems to make the evening more complicated. But in the end, Zhen herself, Rita, and the maid Esmeralda (who goes along with it to keep the job she needs in order to gain custody of the children she is fighting over with her ex-husband) give the minister an intense night of sex. In the morning, Rita, who has formed a special bond with Zhen, orders Franco to leave the house, since it belongs to her and she holds—together with her brother Michele—a majority stake in the company. That way, she alone will benefit from the minister’s favors and concessions. Then the irreparable happens: the politician’s head of security goes upstairs to look for him and finds him dead in the bedroom. The Carabinieri arrive and find the briefcase full of banknotes and the drugs; but the magistrate decides to cover everything up, having it announced that the minister died “of natural causes.” It is a defeat for everyone: Franco, Rita, and Esmeralda feel as if their world has collapsed. While the magistrate decides to spare Franco, who in theory should have been charged with attempted bribery and possession of narcotics, Franco—unaware of this—commits suicide by jumping from the terrace.