Luana Giuliani and Penélope Cruz in L’immensità (Music Box Films)

Nostalgia, love, and beautiful, burnished cinematography are some of the elements that go into Emmanuele Crialese’s L’Immensità, his loosely autobiographical story of a transgender tween and his family’s internal struggles in 1970s Rome. These components don’t always coalesce. The result sometimes feels like an undercooked omelet or a wobbly cake—made with rich, tasty ingredients but in need of a firmer texture.

Living with parents and two younger siblings, scowling, quiet Adriana (Luana Giuliani in an underplayed lead performance) identifies as a boy, Andrea. This claim infuriates his macho father (Vincenzo Amato) and distresses his mother (Penélope Cruz). Though a source of tension for the spouses, Andrea may be the least of their problems, locked as they are in a miserable marriage. Andrea silently watches his mother suffer from the father’s infidelity and angry beatings. Though the youngster’s solemn witness helps to establish him as stoic, it also has the effect of distancing the mother’s pain. Although Cruz is wonderful in the part, we never really get to know her character, although we watch her succumb to anguish as the film proceeds.

Apart from struggling with gender identity, Andrea goes through many Italian rites of passage: coping with Catholic school, leading a naughty prank on vacation, and forming a forbidden puppy-love alliance with a Romani girl who lives in an enclave on a vacant lot, surrounded by a symbolic wall of wild reeds. Beautifully shot in golden light, these interludes are sweet, tame, and could use a bit more forward momentum or at least dramatic tension.

In its fixation on a martyred mother, family secrets, and forbidden desires, L’Immensità serves up an Italian Tennessee Williams–lite. Where the film really cuts loose is in its staging of Andrea’s elaborate flights-of-fancy sequences mimicking vintage Italian pop culture and TV. Crialese stages a hoedown where a bewigged Cruz stands in for Raffaella Carrà, star of the variety show Canzonissima. On another stage, Cruz imitates smoky chanteuse Mina. And Andrea has a showstopper of his own, bopping through a hall of mirrors performing Adriano Celentano’s bumptious novelty hit “Prisencolinensinainciusolin” in a snappy fedora. It’s unclear whether the numbers are supposed to say anything about the characters, their relationships, or their inner needs, but they look great and add some wit to an often decorously melancholy tale.

Furnished and dressed in period style most American movies can’t match, L’Immensità doesn’t lack for talent and heart. A little more grit and a challenge to its morose, self-absorbed vibe would have heightened the film’s impact, but you can’t always have everything. For many viewers, Crialese’s two hours of high style and pathos will hit the spot.