Motorvalley

The Ghosts of the Track

I’ve never been much of a gearhead, but there’s a certain rumble of engines that skips the ears and rattles the sternum instead. Matteo Rovere knows that rumble. A decade ago he made *Veloce come il vento* (Italian Race), proved Italy could deliver a genuinely gripping racing drama, and now he’s back on that asphalt with *Motorvalley*, a six-episode Netflix mini-series that swaps tight feature-film focus for the sprawling chaos of family TV. I went in skeptical. Six hours of Italian GT racing and familial backstabbing sounded like a lot. Sometimes it still feels that way. Yet when it clicks, the show vibrates.

The setup leans hard on sports tropes. Elena Dionisi (Giulia Michelini), the disgraced heiress of a racing empire, gets shoved out of the family business after a cheating scandal costs her father his life. She wants the team back. To do it she assembles a ragtag crew around Blu (Caterina Forza), a volatile prodigy who treats speed like a drug, and Arturo (Luca Argentero), an ex-champion dragging a heap of unresolved trauma.



It’s easy to look at this trio and groan at how familiar it all feels. The reviewer at *Micropsia Cine* nailed it: the show “is pure formula for fans of *Fast & Furious* and *Drive to Survive*.” They’re not wrong—the plot beats are easy to predict. You can tell when the fights will erupt, when the engine will cough, and when the unlikely crew will finally begin to function.

Still, the formula works because Rovere and co-creators Gianluca Bernardini and Francesca Manieri never downplay the physical cost of racing. The camera doesn’t linger on slow-motion triumphant laps. It stays close to the grime, the sweat, the vibrating metal. One scene from the second episode has stuck with me. Blu is going through a weird, almost *Karate Kid*-style training session with Arturo. She’s exhausted, furious, slamming her fists on the steering wheel in a dusty parking lot. The camera stays with her. It just watches the heat build in that cramped cockpit. There’s no racing happening, just a girl who can’t envision life without going 150 miles an hour.



This brings me to Argentero. Italian TV audiences mostly know him as the reassuring heartthrob of *Doc - Nelle tue mani*. For Arturo, he reportedly dropped 12 kilos, and it shows. He looks like a man keeping his back exposed for a possible punch. His shoulders slope forward, his walk through the paddock is more of a guarded shuffle than a confident stride. That posture says everything about the crash that ended his career without dialogue. Whether that silent acting can carry the clunkier melodramatic threads depends on how much soap-opera heat you’re willing to sit through.

Michelini’s task is tricky, too. Elena is hard to root for. She’s manipulative, obsessed with her family’s glory, and willing to burn others to get what she wants. The writers try to soften her with sudden bursts of vulnerability, but that sometimes results in jarring tonal jumps—one moment she’s screaming, the next moment she’s bonding unexpectedly in the same scene.



I’m not convinced *Motorvalley* needed six hours to tell this story. The middle episodes drag, drowning in sponsorship deals and sibling drama. Still, when the light turns green, the show remembers what it is. It’s less about winning and more about people who can’t handle quiet, everyday life finding the one place where their internal chaos makes sense.