Critics reviews

A soulful romance, an existential action flick and something of a miracle movie — the appealing slow-burner "Salvo"hovers at the crossroads of genre. Its story pulls in all directions, and its mood, tone and backdrop are as serious as a Mafia hit. Yet its setup has the makings of a comedy sketch...

First-time feature directors Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza expertly sustain the tension for what seems like an eternity, pushing and pulling their two characters throughout the house; when the violence finally erupts, it occurs offscreen, so viewers must experience it as Rita does. Stop Salvo here, and it looks like a potential masterpiece. Alas, it's a steep downhill grade from there...

The gradual realisation that the movie isn't going to be all action is a comedown. A certain type of viewer's apt to reflexively (tiresomely) complain that any exciting screen violence is a dehumanising atrocity, failing to account for horrific reality. Salvo might be made for exactly such types, since it pays penance for the initial carnage by draining the energy while conscientiously tracking the continuing moral fallout.

Grassadonia and Piazza's very particular sense of lighting and framing, though handsome, often exudes a formality that perpetually stifles the story's sense of spontaneity. There's one exception, and it's so striking as to seem like a deliberate rebuke of this rigid artistry: a freeing and bracingly abstract scene wherein Salvo and Rita run through a field in total darkness, their bodies nothing more than amorphous shapes.

The ensuing, 20-minute-plus cat-and-mouse game—resourcefully shot by Daniele Ciprì in low light, and with an enormously suggestive use of sound and off-screen space—sets the tone for a film that is plainly more interested in atmosphere than plot. Mindful of the traps of the mafioso thriller, Grassadonia and Piazza obey the rules of the genre even while deranging them slightly.

Despite great camerawork and a quite hypnotic rhythm of the first third of the film, Salvo seems to be the weakest link in this year's selection by far. Otherwise good acting doesn't always find the right balance between the expressive and the gimmicky, flooding the audience with an overabundance of grimaces and gestures.

The dramatic shock that flows out of that story back onto the main on-screen drama may be the movie's most sublime gambit, one that at first may even seem to be a mistake, or a misstep. Salvo embraces crime genre tropes and then stretches them into a new shape, so that old devices look and feel new. It reminds us that the confinement of genre, not unlike Rita's own constrained circumstances, can have unexpectedly fresh results.