Pasquale Marrazzo’s “The Neighbor,” titled “Hotel Milano” in Italy, is a melodramatically tragic gay romance about two lovers kept apart after one is beaten into a coma by gay bashing skinheads.

The comatose Luca (Jacopo Costantini) has no idea his conservative Catholic family won’t let his “We are going to get old together, don’t forget that” partner Riki (Michele Costabile) visit and try to comfort him, because his parents are grieving, but still fully capable of blaming Riki for “luring” their son away and is thus responsible for him being in the hospital.

Luca’s sister (Luisa Vernelli) is tolerant and compassionate enough to give the frantic Riki updates, but she won’t tell him which hospital Luca’s in and “can’t” broach the subject of him visiting with her docgmatic parents.

Marrazzo’s film begins with the bullying the leads to the beating, and as Luca lies in the hospital, unresponsive with his doctor bracing everyone for “the worst” (in Italian with English subtitles), Riki’s flashbacks flesh out their romance and the ugly history he has with the gang leader who beat his lover almost to death simply for being gay.

Luca’s mother (Lucia Vasini) is unbending, disapproving to the point of being tactless when the two men have their mothers over for a meal. Riki and his clingy, weepy, substance-abusing mom (Rossanna Gay) slip out rather than deal with the attitudes of Mrs. 1955.

The flashbacks are more expositonal than emotional, and the same holds for the shifts in point of view. We see much of the story from Riki’s angle, but sister Rachelle finally getting up the nerve to ask her parents gives us their post-coma state — guilt-ridden, but still angry. We see the arrested thug visited by his own father, and simplistically note the way violence is taught, not inherited.

And we meet an uncle Riki is unusually reliant on, and get clues about a different cause-and-effect in play there.

Queer cinema has differing degrees of sophistication, depending on how far along the road to tolerance this or that film culture has been. Marrazzo’s downbeat, slow and repetitive tale — with shouting-match fireworks in addition to depicting the savage beating –feels like an American indie of the late ’80s.

The structure gives the picture a diffuse feel, as if the writer-director hopes to lay on backstory that will distract us from how short a distance this story covers and not allow the viewer to realize how thin the text is, with or without these subtexts.

The performances, verbal explosions aside, share the picture’s generally flat tone.

Neither of the movie’s two innocuous titles resonate or have any explained meaning, although we’re allowed to conjure up explanations in our heads. And whatever style points Marrazzo thought he was scoring with his “daring” finale left me cold.

Still, with gay bashing on the rise around the world, this Pride Month release seems timely, if not exactly novel in its plot, characters or unaffecting storytelling.

Rating: unrated, graphic violence, sex, nudity, profanity

Cast: Michele Costabile, Jacopo Costantini, Rossana Gay, Lucia Vasini and Luisa Vernelli

Credits: Scripted and directed by Pasquale Marrazzo. A Dark Star release.

Running time: 1:36