The Medicine Seller

Bruno makes the rounds of doctors on behalf of a drug company. His job is to determine which medicine gets prescribed. He does it not with science but with relationships: gifts, dinners, invitations to conferences, money directly. Some of the doctors are used to it, some resist, and the ones who resist are talked round in time. Bruno earns well. Then a hospital contract raises the stakes, and he sees what the work he does has done to a patient. At that point he has to choose between going on and stopping. Antonio Morabito directs the Italian film; a hundred and five minutes, with Claudio Santamaria as Bruno and Isabella Ferrari in the cast. Its subject is the relationship between the drug industry and medicine. It is not looking for a guilty man; it looks at how the system makes everyone feel they are doing an ordinary job.