We'll Call Him Andrea

A late De Sica, and one that is almost never screened today. Nino Manfredi and Mariangela Melato play a couple who teach at the same primary school. They love each other and cannot have a child. The title comes from that: they have already named the child who has not arrived. De Sica treats the situation less as a medical problem than as everyday erosion. A working day spent with classrooms full of other people's children, then an empty flat. As the pressure builds, the couple turn on each other and keep asking the same question in different forms: whose fault is this. Manfredi's comic timing is buried inside the drama here, and Melato appears before the Wertmüller films that would define her. The film is known for refusing a comfortable ending; neither the couple nor the viewer gets the sense that anything has been resolved. Who it is for: viewers ready to watch a marriage crack quietly, and drawn to the bitter side of Italian comedy. Who it is not for: anyone who hears De Sica and expects something on the scale of Bicycle Thieves. This is smaller, looser and far less ambitious.