It's a sad, anxious world when a hard-working dad has no choice but to sleep in his car and eat at a soup kitchen. Such is the fate of 40-year-old Giulio (Valerio Mastandrea), whose act of infidelity (sex with a colleague in the archives room of the Rome city office where he works) causes a deep, irreparable rupture in his marriage with Elena (Barbora Bobulova). The couple agree to stay together for the sake of their children — wannabe rock chick Camilla (Rosabell Laurenti Sellers) and her innocent younger brother Luca (Lupo De Matteo). But one day Elena claims she can no longer bear Giulio's presence and he leaves, telling her everything will be OK and that he'll take care of money matters.
This is the world of "Balancing Act" (released originally as "Gli Equilibristi"): brilliant in its honesty and depiction of life in Rome, a view we could never glean from, say, Woody Allen's "To Rome With Love."
There are no glamorous clubs, upscale restaurants or bright-red Ferraris parked up on the curb. This is a Rome where a city social worker such as Giulio gets a monthly salary of ?1400 with which he needs to maintain a separate apartment and pay for Luca's dental work. But rents are high, the economy is sinking into the mud and as for the cost of living, every Roman complains it's skyrocketed over the past few years.