It would be well-nigh impossible to come up with a drearier, more melancholy movie than Tomorrow Is Today, one of the closing-day attractions at the Rhode Island International Film Festival.

A homeless man. An unhappy teenage girl still hurting from her mother's death. Two attempted suicides. Two fatal traffic accidents. An alcoholic cop wallowing in self-pity, blaming himself for his wife's death. A stepmother who is at her wit's end. An elderly woman with Alzheimer's.

Whew! Enough for three movies. But then writer Mark Hefti, who also plays the homeless, suicidal man, hits us with a surprise: one of the principal characters we've grown to like is dying from an incurable heart ailment.

Okay, so Tomorrow Is Today is supposed to be all about conquering our demons and finding hope in the comfort of others. But what can you say about a movie where one of the lead characters fantasizes about her funeral?

Hefti's hefty script is a laundry list of everyone's greatest fears. It seems like something a mooning teenage girl might have written and has all those moody, dark thoughts of something from English Lit. 101, complete with walks on the beach where two of the characters banter philosophical arguments about life. "Life is a dance between monotony and miracles; somebody important once said that," says Hefti's homeless Greg near the start shortly before he washes up on the Jersey shore following an attempted suicide. Luckily for him, unluckily for the audience, he's brought around by the pretty "almost 17" Julie Peterson (Scout Taylor-Compton), who adopts him as her Good Samaritan project.

Julie moves him into a house whose occupants are out of town. She brings him food. She tries to comfort him after discovering his unhappiness is the result of one of the script's fatal traffic accidents.

She's sincere, but naive. Greg is old enough to be her father. It's supposed to be innocent, yet has the undercurrent of ickiness, sort of like one of those girls who finds her "soul mate" on the Internet and secretly leaves home to meet him.

Julie's stepmother doesn't know how to handle the situation. But then she has her own problems, pining to have a child that her husband doesn't seem to want at the moment.

Then there's the subplot revolving around the police chief (Warren Draper) who blames himself for his wife's death in a traffic accident, even though he wasn't in either car. This adds another melancholy note in a film that already has enough with the melancholy piano music on the soundtrack.

There's lots of weeping and self pity. Just when you think all this wailing is over and the screen fades to black at what seems to be the end, an ominous statement appears on screen: "10 months later . . ." Uh-oh.

Tomorrow Is Today is well acted, however, in a very natural, realistic way and the cinematography is very lovely, especially a sunrise which seems to occur in the same place over the water as a later sunset. These things brighten an otherwise morose venture.

mjanuson@projo.com / 401-277-7276

Tomorrow Is Today will be screened at 2:45 p.m. tomorrow at the Columbus Theatre, 270 Broadway, Providence, as part of the Rhode Island International Film Festival.