La gioia (2025)

Gioia Montefiori is a middle-aged French teacher at the “Regina Margherita” high school in Turin. Kind-hearted and somewhat naïve, she lives with her elderly parents in a small house in a residential neighborhood. Her mother is very religious and a little cantankerous, while her father has Alzheimer’s. Gioia’s life revolves around school and home, where she raises Angora rabbits and watches Juventus matches on television; she is a huge fan. She has never known love except through Flaubert’s books. One day, she gives Alessio Benedetti a ride in her car. He is a fourth-year high school student repeating the year, known for his troubled behavior. The boy lives with his mother, a supermarket cashier, and helps support her financially by dressing up and prostituting himself to male and female clients in private clubs, encouraged in this by his mother’s friend, Cosimo, a hairdresser. After getting to know Gioia better, Alessio asks her to tutor him privately in French. The two grow increasingly close, and their relationship becomes almost romantic. Alessio persuades Gioia to believe in a plan to move to Monte Carlo, where he claims to have a contact who can help him open a real estate services agency. Trusting him and believing she can change her life, Gioia withdraws €220,000—all her savings—and hands it over to him as an investment. But on the day they are supposed to leave for Nice, Alessio does not show up at the airport and disappears, leaving Gioia with no news of him. Gioia keeps calling him and believing in their relationship, even going to his home and to his mother’s workplace, though his mother initially seems not to know where he is. Alessio eventually contacts her himself and asks to meet the next day to give her the money back, after Gioia has threatened to report him. At first she does not believe him, but she gives in easily, also driven by her desire to see him again. The next day, Alessio, visibly changed, shows up with Cosimo, who pretends to be his lawyer and invites Gioia into the car, supposedly to sign a document concerning the return of the money. They trick her into going to an isolated road near Rivarolo. Cosimo tries to persuade her to drop the matter of the money, but she stands firm and threatens to report them to the Carabinieri if the money is not returned. Alessio, who has remained silent until then, also joins the argument, trying to apologize to Gioia and justify himself, and revealing the nature of his relationship with Cosimo. Shocked, Gioia gets out of the car and tries to run away, but Alessio stops her and drags her back into the car, where he strangles her to death. Her body is hidden in a nearby well.