Quo Vadis, Baby?

Oscar-winning Italian director Salvatores had a popular success here recently with his nicely nuanced kidnap thriller, set in the sunlit Mezzogiorno, ‘I’m Not Scared’; his latest, sadly less satisfactory movie moves north to Bologna and into darker film noir territory as it follows the efforts of Giorgia (singer Angela Baraldi, in a fine, uningratiating performance), a spikey, single, fortysomething private investigator, to unravel the suspicious suicide of her aspirant actress sister some 15 years before. The film works, initially, as psychological drama, as Giorgia’s detective work rakes over aspects of her own unexamined past and she forms closer bonds with her (unsuspectedly) gay assistant and new lover. Cinematographer Italo Petriccione  – shooting in HD –  is successful in imparting an atmosphere of uneasy suspense to the streets and apartments of Bologna. But, as the movie progresses – and flashbacks, videotape recordings and jagged thriller-rhythm editing begin to overwhelm the interior drama – Salvatores  ties himself in the knot of his own cross-purposes and irrelevant cinematic references.