Did celebrated Italian auteur Nanni Moretti, known at home and abroad for his leftist political satires and introspective human comedies, just make his first straight-up soap opera? The answer is mostly yes, which begs yet another question: Is that actually a good thing?

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With a hefty filmography that includes one Palme d’Or winner, a Silver Lion and a Silver Bear among countless Italian prizes, the 73-year-old director clearly has nothing left to prove when it comes to arthouse cinema, for which he’s been his country’s most consistent commodity since the 1980s. Not unlike Woody Allen, but minus the disastrous personal life, Moretti puts out a new film as often as he can, testing out different genres while maintaining his deadpan humor and personal touch. Not all Moretti movies are created equal — and some deserve more praise, such as his 2011 Vatican dramedy, We Have a Pope — but they’re always made with intelligence and a fair amount of levity undercut by darker currents swirling beneath the surface.

That hot and cold, funny and tragic tone is present throughout the early parts of his searing 17-year romance, It Will Happen Tonight (Succederà questa notte), until the film swerves into pure melodrama later on, taking Moretti to places he hasn’t necessarily gone before — except, perhaps, in The Son’s Room, which remains one of his biggest successes to date.

The sharp and luminous Jasmine Trinca (also headlining Venice competition title The Spiral) made her screen debut in that 2001 movie and is well-served here by a role in which she has to constantly contain her passion for a total stranger, until finally deciding it’s time to go for it. Her paramour is played by hunky French charmer Louis Garrel, who flexes his Italian skills, as well as a handlebar mustache that makes him look like a forgotten member of the Red Brigades, as a man so smitten with an unknown woman that he never forgets her despite all the time gone by.

Is the film often cheesy and a tad ridiculous? Certo. But it’s also rather watchable if you accept its mass of coincidences, hopping as easily as an Alitalia frequent flyer to multiple destinations (Rome, Oslo, Turino, San Sebastian and Mumbai) and spanning several decades to tell the tale of two lovers who keep serendipitously crossing paths. As the years go by, babies are born, parents get sick and die, careers are started then ended, wives and husbands are thwarted, and, eventually, sheets are strewn and booties are tapped. Despite some questionable hair styles, Trinca and Garrel remain agelessly attractive throughout all of this, proving that their characters’ undying love, whether unrequited or not, is all they ever needed.

Adapted by Moretti, Federica Pontremoli and Valia Santella from the stories of Israeli writer Eshkol Nevo, the script requires a sizeable leap of faith from the get-go, although the director sprinkles early scenes with just enough humor to make the medicine go down.

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We are simultaneously introduced to Matteo (Garrel) and Greta (Trinca), two 20-somethings undergoing major romantic crises in two parts of the globe. The former just had a kid in Oslo with his younger Norwegian girlfriend (Melina Akerman), who abandons them when Matteo decides to move back to Rome to spend more time with his domineering Italian mother (Angela Finocchiaro). Greta, meanwhile, is living in India when her expat boyfriend proposes to her out of the blue, making her question whether she wants a marriage and prompting her to ask her father (Moretti, providing most of the movie’s laughs) to swoop in and act as a sounding board.

The film then skips ahead to seven years later: Matteo is out playing tennis in Rome with his brother and, what do you know, Greta just happens to be getting married to a new man (Antonio De Matteo) in the garden right next door. She strolls onto the court in her wedding dress for a quick game with Matteo, who falls head over heels for her but is unable to jump in like Dustin Hoffmann in The Graduate to break up the ceremony. Did I say this film is corny?

Several more improbable twists occur over the next decade, throwing Matteo and Greta into each other’s paths until they can no longer quell their burning mutual attraction. Before that happens, the film takes a long detour to focus on Matteo’s relationship with his cancer-stricken French father (Hippolyte Girardot), who’s dying wish is to attend a Bruce Springsteen concert. Off they go to Spain, where Matteo somehow runs into Greta a second time, then heads over to see The Boss with his dad, prompting a teary-eyed singalong of “Hungry Heart” (also the title of Nevo’s short story collection) before the inevitable death scene that follows.

Moments like these can definitely be a bit overwrought (and humor-wise, Moretti should probably refrain from the Viagra jokes), but they’re also handled with a fair amount of tongue-in-cheek tact despite the unbelievable circumstances. The director has always excelled at shifting moods from light to dark and back again — his most beloved work, Caro Diaro, is all about that — and It Will Happen Tonight benefits from that tone until the gloves finally come off along with all the clothes, and the movie starts laying on the sauce too thickly.

By then, Greta and Matteo have been through a lot — there’s a whole subplot involving Greta’s depressed teenage daughter (Elisabetta Traversa), but it feels too sketched out to carry weight — and this in part explains why they’ve never been available for each other, even if they’ve clearly had a few too many chances over the years. The gloomy reality of not getting what you want, because life keeps getting in the way, is the main ingredient that holds this otherwise tawdry romance together, though not entirely.

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