‘There’s Still Tomorrow’ is an Italian hit but an English-language miss

“There’s Still Tomorrow” — 2 stars

“There’s Still Tomorrow,” an alleged comedy-drama about spousal abuse in post-World War II Rome, is the directorial debut of its star, the established Italian actress Paola Cortellesi. It arrives here on the heels of winning six David di Donatello Awards, Italy’s equivalent of the Oscars, and it is proof that some properties simply do not make the transition from one culture to another.

It’s not for lack of trying. Cortellesi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Furio Andreotti and Giulia Calenda, cuts a striking, sympathetic figure as Delia, a wife and mother in Rome’s working-class Testaccio Quarter who lives under the thumb of a violent brute of a husband named Ivano (Valerio Mastandrea). Her two young sons (Mattia Baldo and Gianmarco Filippini) are foulmouthed little patriarchs in the making, but daughter Marcella (Romana Maggiora Vergano), on the cusp of adulthood, is more empathetic to her mother’s plight, if frustrated by Delia’s meek excuses for the man who beats her.

It’s the style of “There’s Still Tomorrow” that fails to make the transatlantic crossing. Working with cinematographer Davide Leone, Cortellesi has mounted a beguiling black-and-white re-creation of the postwar films of Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica, groundbreaking works of Italian neorealism that focused on the struggles of ordinary people, often poor, often played by nonprofessional actors. The DNA of “Rome, Open City” (1945), “Shoeshine” (1946), “Paisan” (1946) and “Bicycle Thieves” (1948) courses proudly and often quite beautifully through this movie.

But the filmmaker-star’s attempt to graft other genres onto the film’s trunk doesn’t take. A scene in which Ivano rears back to strike Delia and suddenly we’re watching a lyrically choreographed dance duet of domestic assault is the first alarm bell. There are more to come, bits of slapstick, random musical numbers and non-period rap music on the soundtrack that play at odds with the narrative and alienate the audience. Mastandrea effectively makes his character one of the most hateful screen villains in recent memory — Ivano is a swaggering definition of the abusive, gaslighting spouse — and Giorgio Colangeli as his bedridden father embodies the hardwired macho entitlement from which the son has sprung. That “There’s Still Tomorrow” regards these two with both contempt and a weary semi-comic shrug says a lot about the movie’s embedded cultural assumptions.

More realistically, Cortellesi plays Delia with the exhaustion and compliance of a victim who sees no way out. “Where would I go?” she asks Marcella when the daughter demands to know why she doesn’t leave, and she has a point. The strongest aspect of “There’s Still Tomorrow” is its incisively drawn re-creation of an urban neighborhood “village” where everyone knows everyone’s business and they all expect a battered woman to stay in her place, from the church to her sons to the busybodies in the courtyard. The daughter’s tender relationship with Giulio (Francesco Centorame), the son of a local cafe owner, would seem to offer a way out of this archaic system, but the filmmakers hint that even the nice ones are too deeply embedded in a culture of control.

There ARE “nice ones” in “There’s Still Tomorrow,” but Cortellesi seems unsure what to do with them. Delia’s childhood sweetheart, Nino (Vinicio Marchioni), is now a garage mechanic who casts longing looks and little else her way. A Black American MP (Yonv Joseph) offers her sympathy, chocolate bars and a helping hand with a late plot development that seems far-fetched, to say the least. The film does give Delia an underground support system of women friends, including Marisa (Emanuela Fanelli), who runs a vegetable cart in the market and sneaks Delia American cigarettes while urging her to break free. And for a while, it seems like the movie is setting up its put-upon heroine for a great escape.

I won’t spoil the ending other than to say that Delia’s plans dovetail with a crucial moment in Italian sociopolitical history in ways that are cheering in theory and remarkably frustrating to the situation at hand. Cortellesi plays her character with an inner strength that buoys the performance and the movie — she bears a physical resemblance to both Jeanne Moreau and Anne Bancroft, neither of them actors given to on-screen timidity — and Vergano is quietly luminous as the daughter.

“There’s Still Tomorrow” was a hit with Italian critics and the ninth highest-grossing film in the country’s history. It speaks to a cultural sisterhood that knows exactly what Paola Cortellesi is talking about. But some things get lost in translation, and this lovingly crafted work of neorealist cosplay is one of them.

• • •

Unrated, but contains language and domestic violence. In Italian (and a bit of English), with subtitles. 118 minutes.