Revenge is a dish that simmers over time. Writer/director Angelina Jolie observes the longstanding feuds that marinate in the aftermath of war in Without Blood. Adapting the brisk novel by Alessandro Baricco, Jolie’s faithful yet boldly cinematic take illustrates the cyclical nature of violence. Past and present mingle here as Without Blood flashes back and forth as Nina (Salma Hayek Pinault) and Tito (Demian Bíchir) reflect upon violent events from years ago. Their encounter, which is not by chance, seems destined to end in a splatter of blood unlike the title promises.
Jolie crafts a gripping tale as she uses the economy of Baricco’s book–barely 100 pages long–to make nerve-wracking use of time. The first act of the film nearly plays out in real time as a gunmen descend upon a family home. Their aim is to settle a score in which their leader will avenge his brother by killing the doctor whom he holds responsible for many deaths during the war including his brother. What the gunmen don’t know, though, is that the father isn’t alone. His daughter, Nina, hides in the floor, while his son waits in the wings with a gun. The encounter unfolds as the doctor and the leader debate the past. Their argument underscores the fact that the war that recently ravaged the unnamed Latin American country is over. The gunman are allegedly on the winning side, but many conflicts still wage in pursuit of justice.
Violence begets more violence as the doctor meets his brutal end. Nina, hiding quietly, witnesses the events. But she survives miraculously thanks to Tito’s aid. Merely a young man himself, he discovers Nina while searching the house and lets her hide, recognizing her innocence. As Nina remains huddled beneath the floorboards, the steady drops of her brother’s blood onto her foot marks her loss of innocence. She reconciles her idea of a loving caring father with the man branded a killer by cold-blooded murderers who gave him a violent end.
This bloodlust fuels Nina years later as she hunts down Tito. He’s not quite sure who she is when she invites him for a drink after stopping by his newsstand, but he figures it out quickly. Jolie then unfolds the second act in a thrilling head-to-head as Hayek Pinault and Bíchir converse over coffee. This conversation unfolds in Jolie’s film nearly as a visual realization of Baricco’s vividly filmable-as-written novel. But while Without Blood is an extremely talky film as Nina and Tito interchangeably get the upper hand in the conversation through the art of captivating storytelling, the note-perfect performances and taut direction keep it absolutely riveting. Meanwhile, the dexterous editing by Xavier Box and Joel Cox seamlessly weaves the past within the propulsive storytelling. You’ll be hooked on every word.
Tito pieces the story together and learns that he is the last one left on Nina’s revenge saga. He tells her the stories he’s heard about his comrades’ grisly ends, while Nina either corrects him or provides juicy details that he missed amid games of broken telephone. Her story is a life of loss and hardship. Hayek Pinault carries a hardness to Nina, moreover, that reflects a tough life. She embodies the seemingly unreconcilable emotional scars of violence. Nina’s stories rarely hold notes of satisfaction as she tells Tito about her rampage of revenge. More often than not, one bad turn invites another in her tales.
Jolie keeps the pace nimble while unfolding the conversation over the course of an hour. Flashback images fill in the past as the ghosts of Nina’s encounters waft in and out of her memories. Even in the telling of her own victimization, Nina’s stories evoke the sad reality that people who don’t learn from the past are bound to repeat themselves.
Without Blood marks a bold turn for Jolie as a filmmaker as she crafts a thrilling chamber piece that nimbly leaves a viewer trading allegiance as the table turns throughout the conversation. While Jolie’s prior efforts behind the camera have generally succeeded as auteur feats, scripting has often been the downfall of her turns as a filmmaker. However, working with Baricco’s book, she finds a concise thematic distillation of much of her work as an artist and humanitarian alike. Scripting riveting dialogue that also speaks to the consequences of violence, Jolie’s screenplay smartly translates Baricco’s text to screen with a similar economy for storytelling. After First They Killed My Father, In the Land of Blood and Honey, and Unbroken, Without Blood bears witness to the hell of war and what comes after. She also holds to the author’s omission of year, place, and context: this could be any war, anywhere in the world.
As a filmmaker, Jolie deftly uses the visual language to evoke Baricco’s interplay between past and present. Her sense of the temporality of cinema, moreover, generates suspense and tension, while her unflinching hand for violence refuses to look away from the brutality that traps these characters. She finds a particularly good partner in Hayek Pinault, who commands the act of storytelling in her tete-a-tete with Bíchir.
Nina’s argument by the end of the conversation is that history often sees itself written by the winners, but who actually wins is a question that evolves over time. It’s a tough and demanding conversation, but one that you absolutely need to be a part of.
