Camino sin retorno

Once there was a promising Italian director with a nearly perfect hand when it came to splatter fun like "Deliria" (Stage Fright) and who eventually delivered the exquisite, tongue-in-cheek postmodern zombie flick "Dellamorte Dellamore" (Cemetery Man) with Rupert Everett in his perhaps finest leading role. That's fifteen years ago, with Soavi having done lots of TV work in the meantime -- maybe the reason why "Arrividerci amore, ciao", his first big-screen venture after more than a decade, is exactly looking like a professionally executed RAI Uno television assignment. The biggest problem of "Amore" is the script, working moderately, occasionally even quite well for about an hour, after which the story is rapidly mutating from a pretty tight, at intervals hard-hitting crime flick into an extraordinarily boring wife-murder yawn ultimately dissolving into lukewarm air, the end being one of the most awful letdowns in Italian thriller history. It's probably my last Soavi movie: Arrividerci Michele, ciao.