Working from a Grazia Verasani novel that was published by his own imprint, director Gabriele Salvatores seems less interested in the whodunnit elements of this disappointingly transparent story than in luxuriating in its hard-boiled atmospherics. Thus he makes disconcerting use of his baroque locations (Bologna, the capital of Italian noir) and exploits Angela Baraldi’s rock star credentials to make her fortysomething private eye appear
a genuine generic outsider capable of holding her own against police commissioner Andrea Renzi. But despite attempting to build suspense through clues leaked in a series of video diaries left by the sister who commited suicide 15 years earlier, Salvatores tells his tale with a lack of subtlety, studding the action with references to his favourite movies.