“Ronchi’s performance alone should be a reason to give this small character drama the attention it deserves.”

“What drives you?” It’s a question several characters in Leonardo Di Costanzo’s small psychological drama Elisa wrestle with, regarding themselves or others. Where does unspeakable evil come from, and why are some drawn to it either as perpetrators or as those who want to grasp it? In his very restrained drama (the anti-Duse, so to speak), Di Costanzo finds it difficult to form a coherent and satisfying answer, but maybe some evil is just incomprehensible. Maybe some people are incomprehensible. Humanity is not rational and acts on instinct, although in this nature-versus-nurture dichotomy Di Costanzo seems to lean to the ‘nurture’ side of things. Still, with a sober mise-en-scene and a quietly devastating central performance, Elisa is a worthwhile investigation into the human psyche and its flaws.

A woman strolls through alpine woods. Long, deep-red winter coat, same color pants. She attends a lecture by a criminologist, Alaoui (Roschdy Zem), who shows his audience a photo of a delighted or at best indifferent crowd witnessing a lynching of two black men in the southern US, sometime in the 1950s. How come these people celebrate an act that even in those times was against the law? It is the prelude to a series of meetings between Alaoui and the woman, Elisa (Barbara Ronchi), as part of his research. Elisa has been in prison for over a decade, convicted for the brutal murder of her sister. She claims to have little memory of the event, and hopes to find an outlet for her guilt and a possible path to redemption in these meetings. But by doing so, what dark secrets about herself will she uncover?

Based on a true story and on the work of Italian criminologists, Di Costanzo aims to shed light on the inner workings of those capable of heinous crimes without the excuse of marginalization or mental illness. Elisa is an unremarkable woman, the daughter of a sawmill owner and his callous wife. The relationship between Elisa and her mother, who belittles her daughter and makes her feel inadequate, is strained to say the least. When she is unexpectedly thrust into a position of responsibility at too young an age, her desperation to not acknowledge failure sets her on a path to cold and calculated murder.

Elisa is a complex character, especially because she is turned so inward. Capable of loving a father who still visits her twice a week, and clearly wrestling with feelings of guilt for which she has no outlet, but also manipulative when needed and someone for whom a lie comes easily. This makes her a hard nut to crack as a character, although after ten years this is clearly no longer the woman who could strangle and burn her sister while spinning a story to a neighbor complaining about the smoke. Ronchi gives a masterful performance that lies mostly in the eyes; eyes that show hurt, remorse, cunning, and a sense of despair in a powerfully understated turn that matches the tone of the film. The actress has one final scene where she can let go a little, and she nails it so hard that she is, at least in the eyes of yours truly, a strong contender to take home a prize on Saturday.

Audiences may have trouble with how hermetic Elisa is. Like Alaoui has to do with the title character, the film has to be pried open piece by piece, and Di Costanzo only gradually feeds us nuggets of information to connect the dots. Elisa’s red outfit being prison attire, for instance, only falls into place a couple of scenes later, partly due to the fact that the rehabilitation facility is quite open and the inmates are granted quite a bit of freedom. Elisa’s backstory working up to and perpetrating the murder of her sister and the attempted murder of her mother comes in bits and pieces through flashbacks, fresh bits of memory that Elisa resurfaces in the moment. This slows down the proceedings considerably, and hampers the development of the supporting cast, with the most important parts next to Zem’s being Diego Ribon as Elisa’s father and Giorgio Montanini as a guard that has a click with Elisa. Valeria Golino’s part as a woman who also has inexplicable violence in her family history, confronting Zem with her questions about forgiveness and innate evil, is a confusing addition to the cast, seemingly only created to give the director more options to speak about the themes of the film.

Elisa is a film that requires patience and being attuned to its uneventful rhythm with few highs and lows. It more or less ripples along as it gradually paints the full picture, but since it is so low on incident (even the murder itself is done off-screen) many might find the film a little boring. Ronchi’s performance alone should be a reason to give this small character drama the attention it deserves though, and while it might not set the Lido ablaze, it is a film with solid box-office prospects in select arthouse theaters.