Since its appearance early on in the Huckleberry Finn polemic, “broken-backed” has furnished a handy critical designation for works somehow fractured or that seem to present a decided midway crisis in story, point of view or technique. A good current example is found in Tony Scott’s Man on Fire remake, where Creasy the Defeated morphs into Denzel the Avenger. Critics usually condemn such shifts, but whether the Janus-change is motivated, plausible or even desirable, must depend on individual taste.

Winner of prestigious awards in its home country and elsewhere, Ferzan Ozpetek’s Facing Windows/La finestra di fronte is a case study of a movie that opens well enough, promises much, changes horses in midstream, and sinks. The film is reminiscent of the recent Gloomy Sunday in its sensual leading lady, treatment of love lost to war, concern with the impingement of the Holocaust on the present, and a certain affirmation of life despite deprivation. But unlike that 1999 GermanoHungarian celebration of Budapest, amour and revenge, this film squanders initial opportunities, betrays its mysterious central character and degenerates into a tableful of calorie-rich confectionery and bittersweet voice-over coda.

In 1943, a grim young baker struggles with another, knifes him and flees into dark, wet cobblestone alleyways, leaving a bloody handprint that fades in the sunlight of now twenty-first century Rome. Crossing a bridge in what is obviously habitual petty squabbling, twenty-nine-year-old Giovanna (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) and Filippo (Filippo Nigro) spot an elderly man (Massimo Girotti), lost and openly brandishing a wad of bills. A doting father but henpecked and underemployed, the husband insists on bringing the mild stranger home to their flat, where the dazed man talks little and remembers less, only that, as he reveals to the couples’ daughter, he is Simone.

Inevitable complications come about when a planned overnight stay lengthens and character is uncovered. Emotionally and sexually impatient with the kindly, harassed Filippo, Giovanna works as inspector in a chicken packaging plant, gazes out her kitchen window at a handsome neighbor across the street, feels too old to dare her dream of being a pastry chef, and supplements income by selling cakes to Irene’s pub. The newcomer displays a thorough knowledge of baking and slowly recalls bits and pieces of a past, but wanders away one evening and is found with the help of Lorenzo (Raoul Bova). He is the handsome man in the facing window and, in turn, has been observing her, as well. Physical and emotional attraction between them grows, encouraged by friend-babysitter-confidante-coworker Eminè (Serra Yilmaz), who urges Giovanna to have her fling and get it done with.

Though you may have guessed in part, there will be no spoilers ahead. Simone speaks of his own lost love, the truth hinted at in memory flashbacks so brief that some may wonder whether the actors are the same or merely lookalikes. Red herrings and incomplete intrusions are left dangling, such as the innuendo of words and marvelous faces at a cloth shop once a bakery, and in the illegal African partner and father of Eminè’s two children.

The film is dedicated to Girotti, who passed away in January 2003, before his posthumous David Award as Best Actor, Italy’s Oscar and ironically his single nomination in a hundred-film career that began in 1939 and included work with Rossellini, Visconti, De Sica and Bertollucci. Understated, neutral and dignified, even the respected eighty-four-year-old veteran could not make Simone survive the unfortunate transformation called for later in the Ozpetek/Gianfilippo Corticelli plot. Nor, despite a good cast -- easily overlooked, Nigro is especially compelling -- does the film itself come off well.

A twist that is less of a shock than it might have been -- fairly, perhaps only in the retrospective light of today’s attitudes -- falls flat alongside the protagonist actor’s old-new character. That choices have been made, that new forks in the road confront us, is hardly a revelation, and has elsewhere been handled less disappointingly.

(Released by Sony Pictures Classics and rated “R” for some language and sexuality.)