Salma Hayek anchors devastating revenge story that lacks bait

Angelina Jolie has long been fascinated by the ways in which war impacts people’s lives and the generations beyond. In her latest directorial feature, Without bloodWe follow a little girl named Nina whose family is ravaged by an act of violence in the aftermath of an unnamed conflict. Nina lives on, revenge becomes the driving force of her life.

The decades-spanning tale is mostly a two-hander between Salma Hayek Pinault and Demián Bichir, two actors at the top of their game. First, though, Jolie reveals what just happened to Pinault’s Nina. In a scene evocative of Westerns, we see men somewhere in Mexico killing their enemies on horseback before arriving at a house to take revenge on a doctor, Nina’s father, who wronged them. The war is over, he claims, there is no need to do this. But just because one side has one does not mean that the violence is over.

Revenge drives much of without blood

The film questions what revenge really does for those who seek it

Like family curses and genetic conditions, revenge can be passed down from generation to generation, too. It becomes an ugly cycle of emotional and physical violence. Nina is continuing this cycle when we first meet her as an adult. She approaches Bitchir’s Tito at his keys and invites him for a drink. He thought that the well-dressed woman would ask him that, but he quickly put two and two together.

much of Without blood Another long conversation between the couple is spent, exploring the intervening years between the opening scene and the dinner they have in flashback. Jolie frames much of the conversation in tight close-ups of Pinault and Bichir’s faces, cigarettes hanging delicately between lips or perched firmly between fingers. We spend more time with them than in the past.

It’s a kind of deception. Nina wants to reel Tito into her tragic story, eliciting some emotion from the man who ruined her family. But he is not on the defense. Instead, he explains all the little ways he still touches her life after they parted ways all those years ago. The world is small and those connected by conflict and violence are often pulled back to each other by unseen forces.

Despite strong performance, Without blood Does not come together completely. The use of flashbacks is an interesting choice, but I found myself wondering why the story was told this way instead of in chronological order. Both would weave great stories reaching through time to culminate in this climactic conversation. But the flashbacks make the characters feel thin, their inner lives hidden in all the things from the past that we don’t see.

You could make an argument that this is the point. War and trauma often cause people to lose memory or distort the truth to protect themselves and those they love. However, this is not the case here. Nina remembers everything, so much so that she has already carried out two brutal acts of revenge against the men who visited her on that fateful day, when she was a little girl.

Tito is not sure what she wants in the end. To kill him, even though he saved her that day? To look into his eyes and see if there is any destruction in the wrinkles and lines and scars that mark his face? Just to be able to say your piece and leave it? I’m not sure Nina knows what she wants either, other than to make sure Tito knows she still carries what happened to her all these years later.

The war ended for the country, but Nina had to fight a war all her life, from when she was an orphan until years later as a child bride and eventual institutionalization. All this happened because of what Tito and his accomplices did, directly and indirectly. Tito’s collaboration in later moments of her life only further proves this. It is as if Without blood Physical manifestations of war and trauma are said to be like ghosts – they haunt Nina and Tito, allowing them to live their normal lives while specters of regret and violence linger nearby.

Without blood Had its premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. The film is 91 minutes long and has not yet been rated.