The End of the World in Our Usual Bed in a Night Full of Rain—a title that cumbersome is as good a way as any to assure attention for a movie that otherwise might not attract much comment. In her latest work Lina Wertmuller refers to serious, not to say fashionable, topics of international concern: the women's drive for equality; the fact that, while a relatively few people are far too rich, the vast majority of people are far too poor; the savagery with which nations apply military sanctions at levels safely below the critical mass of nuclear warfare; the alleged imminent death by pollution of the only planet available to us. But the couple whose personal history evokes these considerations … are ill-suited for a rational exploration of large social issues. They are a pair of hysterics who communicate most readly by hitting, kicking, scratching, upending and...