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Antonio Ligabue holds an unusual place in the annals of mid-20th-century Italian art, championed by those who feel his boldly-colored, largely naive paintings are the product of a self-taught artist whose mental incapacities prove that natural spirit transcends training and intellect when wielding a paint brush. Wherever one falls on Ligabue’s talents, making a film about his life would always be tricky given the difficulty of depicting on-screen a linguistically challenged, differently-abled man prone to frequent eccentric outbursts without falling into the trap of implying we should celebrate his output simply because he was what would have been called in the past “simple minded.”

Yes, Elio Germano tackles — he seems to almost always tackle — the fiendishly difficult role with customary gusto, and the screenplay works hard to develop sympathy, yet Giorgio Diritti’s mélange of impressionistic episodes and straightforward biopic recreations make “Hidden Away” more a record of...