Salvo

SALVO as written and directed by Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza has won many awards. It is a lengthy (2 long hours) story (or view) of the life of a hit man and the reason it succeeds is the magnetic performance of Saleh Bakri ('The Band's Visit') who magnetizes the story with his penetrating gaze.

Salvo (Saleh Bakri) is a bodyguard and hit man for a Mafioso. After foiling an attack on his employer, Salvo hunts down the man who organized it – Renato - and encounters the man's blind sister, Rita (Sara Serraiocco). She causes Salvo to question himself and his existence. The camera focuses on close ups of Rita's face as she tries to disguise her fear by singing. Salvo performs the murder of Renato off screen while we see Rita's reaction. Salvo places his fingers over Rita's eyes and due to some sort of unexplained phenomena, cures her sight. She starts to see forms and shapes, but as the film goes on, her sight improves. Salvo buries Renato and keeps Rita in an empty factory for her security and the remainder of the film shows the transition of a solitary professional hit-man to a man who becomes vulnerable to human connection, offering an allegory with the inexplicable restoration of Rita's sight.

The film is in Italian, is long, dark and very atmospheric. Dialogue is scarce but well chosen. This is a mood piece with a message and well worth waiting it out to understand that message. Grady Harp, December 14

Salvo synopsis may seem like a tear jerker melodrama, but it isn't. This is the European art film at its best. Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai may come to your minds, but even that is like blockbuster in comparison with Salvo. Long shots, minimum of words, no music - that is Salvo. Salvo Mancuso. He is defined by his acts, not his words. The plot is revealed slowly and if you are right kind of spectator, you will enjoy calm atmosphere of this movie. There are some great sequences I won't spoil. This is definitely that kind of film where directors precisely thanked about each shot. This is sad film about lonely people who "live their lives like a rats" (a sentence one of the character says in the movie). If you want to be enjoyed, look somewhere else. if you like film noir, slow films and films where you see the creators know their work with images and sound, this might be for you.

I saw this film at the Ghent (Belgium) film festival 2013, where it was selected for the Global Cinema section. The synopsis on the festival website left a lot to outguess, and confined itself to throwing names and mentioning the praises it received in Cannes and from professional reviewers. So I went in blank, not knowing what to expect.

The opening action scene sets out the daily life of our main character, Salvo, who is a professional hit man and seemingly does nothing else. We see him continuously alert and prepared for anything. When ambushed he chases one of the attackers against fraternally advice to let it go, with the express purpose to learn who is behind the attack. He finds out and immediately heads to his house.

That is where he meets Rita, our second main character, who is the blind sister of the man behind the ambush. In sharp contract with the previous action scenes, this in-house scene drags on much too long. We see Salvo and Rita both moving around in the same house. Rita plays music all day long, and hence does not hear him wandering around. Salvo on the other hand, silently waits for his target at first, and after killing him continues with exploring the house out of professional habit on the lookout for adversaries. Given many stairs and rooms, it takes some time before they notice each others presence. Salvo needs some time to grasp the notion that Rita is blind and poses no immediate danger. At the same time we witness through her eyes some light flashes when he touches her on the head, while reading between the lines giving us a hint that her blindness is about to be cured.

His underlying reasons not to kill her but to take her along, puzzle me and we are left unclear about it even after the closing titles. There were no sexual intentions that we are aware of. And having a woman to take care of, seems a stumbling block in his line of work. Salvo leaves Rita behind in a deserted building for several days without his real purpose becoming much clearer. She explores her confined quarters, at first by groping around as she was used to do when totally blind. At a later stage, we see that she made attempts to cover the windows with material lying around, while it (we assume) hurts her eyes that need time to adjust.

Back at home, Salvo seems restless and very unlike the focused man he usually is. The man and woman (a couple?) waiting on him, apparently his servants, are as confused as we are. Salvo arranges for food, drives to the place he imprisoned her, and wants Rita to eat it together, but she refuses at his first attempt. We clearly see that her earlier ways of moving around, gets more and more like someone really able to see, in no danger of stumbling over furniture and other objects around. Still unexplained is the sudden cure of her blindness, seemingly starting when Salvo touched her the first time.

In one of the final scenes his mafia boss arrives and demands that he kills Rita and returns for work. Salvo and Rita escape together, after a shootout, while she supports him because of a seriously looking shot wound. It cannot be construed as a spoiler that no happy end can come out of this situation.

All in all, it is neither the drama nor the love story that I anticipated when reading the synopsis on the festival website. All professional reviewers who saw this film in Cannes, applauded it without exception or reservations, but I don't get it. When leaving the theater I scored a 3 out of 5 (average) for the audience award. There is not much dialogue to admire, but apart from that it is perfectly acted. I have some doubts about Rita's facial expressions in the house where they originally met, which I felt as being exaggerated and overdoing it to make an impression on the audience. But I assume this to be natural for someone blind (I also assume it being based on expert advice), which behavior disappeared when her eyes started working. Finally, the narrative and particularly the direction in which the story is heading, is left unclear for us from beginning to end. I think this plot could have been used more effectively, given the ingredients available, but it is easy for me to say.

Now here is a slow moving movie with heart offering a distinctly creative turn in the noire genre. It's also a risk taker in that it may be a tough sell to believe a ruthless tough guy could develop a "soft side" and likewise that a victim could turn to love same said ruthless tough guy. It's a movie that requires a bit of thought to connect the dots and see whether you are convinced that the filmmaker succeeded in this ambitious and complex endeavor. While I admit I'm have some doubts about that, especially the victim turned lover side, it was an enjoyable watch in large part because one is led along by suspense that never culminates in the traditional way. Very much worth a watch unless you are expecting "traditional" mafia movie treatment.

The influence is obviousfor this film, very well made but also suffering from some unnecessary lengths. The main actor is maybe not Alain Delon but quite good enough to hold the comparison. Lonely hired killer who happens to face existential questions, a topic already seen many times before, even in Asian crime films, but rarely in European ones. Italy is a country, great provider of mafia topics, - I wonder why ; ha ha ha - so it is normal that Italy made this one, unlike Spain, Germany or Norway. In the USA, of course there were tons of them all over the years, especially TV products, or direct to DVDs stuff. No, this one is a good film, not that surprising though, with expected results at the end, but a good Italian crime feature.