|
Salt of Life
| Released |
12 August 2011 |
| Director |
Gianni Di Gregorio |
Starring
|
Gianni Di Gregorio, Valeria De Franciscis, Alfonso Santagata, Elisabetta Piccolomini, Valeria Cavalli, Aylin Prandi, Kristina Cepraga |
Writer(s)
|
Valerio Attanasio,
Gianni Di Gregorio |
| Producer(s) |
Angelo Barbagallo |
| Origin |
Italy |
| Running Time |
90 minutes |
| Genre |
Comedy |
| Rating |
TBC |
|
|
The sixty year itch.
Gianni Di Gregorio has become an unlikely Italian star in his sixties. A long-time screenwriter he co-scripted the searingly brutal and bleak gangster movie Gomorrah. However his first film as a writer-director-actor was Mid-August Lunch which was a far gentler look at Italian life that won several international awards. Valeria De Franciscis, who played his mother in that film, also plays his ‘Madre’ in this new effort that has a similar tone.
As in the first film, Di Gregorio plays Gianni, but this time he has a wife and a teenage daughter (played by both the real life versions). Gianni is retired and spends his days largely bored or attending to his demanding ninety-five year-old mother. He is concerned at how his mother is frittering away his inheritance on an extravagant lifestyle while he has to get by on his pension.
But more than anything Gianni misses some romance in his life as that spark has long since gone out of his marriage. His friend Alfonso (Alfonso Santagatao) urges him to have an affair and insists that he can start one with an attractive young woman if he tries hard enough. He lusts after his mother’s pretty young nurse, but a drunken attempt at seduction is an embarrassing disaster. He flirts with a party-girl neighbour and even goes on a ‘date’ with the daughter of one of his mother’s friends that ends in disappointment.
All his efforts ultimately fall flat, but it’s great fun watching him fail. Gianni is basically a nice man and his hangdog expression lets him away with a charge of lechery that could be levelled at the film if the subject matter was handled differently. This film is a humorous examination of the Italian male psyche, how they’re conditioned to think that they’ll always be attractive to beautiful young women. Gianni’s biggest complaint is that he is ‘invisible’ to these younger women.
It’s not laugh out loud hilarious, but this is gently amusing comedy of Italian manners. Di Gregorio carries the film superbly and De Franciscis is a hoot as his slyly manipulative mother. The ending is a touch surreal, especially as you’d think this is the last film you’d hear a Pixies song in. Overall though, this is a light, sweet and charming film, like a biscotti.
-
Jim O’Connor |
