It has been best remembered for the soundtrack piece "Il barone rosso" by Luciano Michelini, which would eventually become the theme song of the comedy show, Curb Your Enthusiasm.

His father, to whom he is very attached, often stays away both for business (he is an engineer and owner of an industry) and because he has a hobby of car racing as an amateur, secretly from his wife.

Consequently, when his mother announces that they will not return to Milan in the autumn, Gianluca suspects that it is because of an imminent divorce between his parents: the misunderstanding isn't helped by Manuela's friendship with the architect Giorgio Savona, with whom he often meets.

The difficulties of being accepted by his fellow villagers and his friendship with little Olga, the daughter of millionaires like him, are not enough to calm the boy who one day, secretly from his mother, manages to escape to Milan, in search of his father, with the help of his friend Marco and the bizarre "The Red Baron".

Distraught, Gianluca returns home, but a few days later he crashes with a toy cart and suffers serious injuries: admitted to hospital, he dies in the arms of his desperate mother, who still dreams of reuniting with his father.