You have to give Italian director Leonardo Di Constanzo credit for making the story behind his latest film feel so real that it plays more like docudrama than actual fiction.

That’s both the pro and con of Elisa , a tough, solemn study of a killer that tosses off plenty of interesting ideas about crime, guilt, justice and absolution, but doesn’t grip the viewer the way you’d expect from this kind of material. Starring Barbara Ronchi as a woman convicted of murdering her own sister, this Venice competition premiere feels too minor to make much of a splash outside Europe, even if it tackles a delicate subject matter with both intelligence and resolve.

You have to give Italian director Leonardo Di Constanzo credit for making the story behind his latest film feel so real that it plays mo

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