A lady (Salma Hayek Pinault) walks right into a plaza sparsely occupied by patrons having fun with a day espresso and {a magazine} and lottery ticket kiosk. She approaches the sales space and fingers a stack of newspapers earlier than asking the attendant (Demián Bichir), an older man with rounded shoulders and studying glasses perched on his nostril, a query. Her supply is studied, as if a extra pure cadence battles in opposition to an inherent severity. She begs the person to shut up the store and have a drink along with her. Her mannered sweetness turns into extra pressing together with his refusal. It is a command, not a request. 

Premiering on the Toronto Movie Competition, With out Blood is Angelina Jolie’s newest foray into directing. The actress, who’s making waves this pageant season along with her efficiency in Pablo Larrain’s Maria, tailored this thinly plotted parable from the novella of the identical identify by the Italian author Alessandro Baricco. With out Blood obliquely investigates the psychological and generational toll of battle. 

Jolie treads acquainted floor right here: A handful of her earlier directorial efforts, together with Within the Land of Blood and Honey, Unbroken and First They Killed My Father, set their motion in opposition to the distressing backdrop of battle. Whereas these different movies grounded themselves with the main points of actual conflicts just like the Bosnian Battle or the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, With out Blood claims no land or period. This lack of specificity could have labored within the arms of a extra risk-taking helmer, however Jolie’s method to route might be as stiff as the girl’s preliminary encounter with the kiosk attendant. Regardless of bursts of intelligence, particularly relating to conveying the fractured high quality of trauma narratives, With out Blood’s vagueness finally ends up blunting lots of its classes. 

An uneasy pressure hangs within the air as the person and girl settle into a close-by restaurant. She begins to inform her story, components of which Jolie reveals early in a confidently staged scene. Her identify is Nina, and when she was a younger lady, three males broke into her home and executed her father (Alfredo Herrera) and brother (Alessandro D’Antuono). Whereas her father’s screams overwhelmed the bungalow and her brother’s blood dripped onto her ankle, Nina hid silently in a burrow beneath some floorboards. 

Her destiny turned lore on this unnamed nation the place a years-long battle brewed between two factions. Whether or not that battle is regional or political isn’t made clear and, in Jolie’s estimation, isn’t related. With out Blood is extra involved with how all battle wounds individuals, from its youngest victims to its oldest perpetrators. A lot of the movie takes place in a restaurant, the place Nina and the person, whose identify we later be taught is Tito, alternate completely different variations of her destiny. In Nina’s telling, she is adopted by a pharmacist (Pedro Hernández), who gambles her off to a rely (Luis Alberti). She finally ends up married at 14 and bearing the rich baron three sons. As Tito tells it, Nina’s union was a botched assassination turned marital association: The rely fell in love as an alternative of killing her. The reality lies someplace between Nina’s scarred reminiscences and Tito’s imprecise recollections. In between these exchanges, the pair provide platitudes in regards to the risks (however by no means the main points) of battle. 

The dialog between Nina and Tito swings between gripping moments and duller ones which might be helped alongside by Hayek Pinault and Bichir’s tense banter. Their chemistry is outlined by mutual recognition and shared trauma. Hayek Pinault hones in on understated motions — tears welling up within the eyes, tightening the grip on her spoon or pursing her lips — to convey the depth of her character’s ache. Bichir nails the delicate shifts required from his character, whose innocence turns into much less black-and-white over the movie’s brisk 90-minute runtime. 

Nonetheless, Jolie’s overly cautious visible language limits the impression of the drama. Flashbacks to the pair’s previous provide some dynamic moments, like fowl’s-eye-view pictures that counsel Tito has been watching Nina through the years, gesturing at their linked fates. There’s magnificence right here, too, as Jolie captures the vividness of the ochre panorama. For essentially the most half, although, she depends on close-ups, toggling between the 2 diners’ faces in easy edits by Xavier Field and Joel Cox. 

That harmless individuals undergo from battle isn’t a provocative stance. But it surely looks like the one level With out Blood could make when it’s not centered — extra curiously — on observing how trauma lives within the physique and shapes the thoughts. Regardless of flashes of energy, the story in the end appears too skinny to bear the burden of its themes.