Cronaca is in fact a tragedy of social class, of a kind familiar to European audiences. A woman from a family of modest income is lifted into the upper classes by her beauty, but the sterility of that life bores her, she has no outlet for her emotions, dwells in the past, and takes (or retakes) someone from her previous milieu, an unemployed car salesman, as her lover. He, however, feels the new difference in their stations acutely. His first remark at their reunion -- ironic, admiring -- when she asks him if he finds her changed, is: "Yes. You have, I don't know -- class!" She tries to equalize their social position by offering to share her money, insisting that love alone has value, and ultimately proposing murder, which will put them on the same ethical if not financial plane; but he continues to act as if he is loving above his station. And that social distance, more than even their guilt at having contemplated a crime, may finally be what prevents them from sharing a future.