Three years ago, after a lifetime of acting in the theatre and working as an assistant director and screenwriter in the cinema, the 60-year-old Gianni Di Gregorio won major national and international fame as co-author of Matteo Garrone's expansive Italian crime moviea complex exposé of the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia. He immediately followed this up with an even greater personal success as the writer, director andstar of the low-budget, multi-prizewinningIn that gem-like chamber he played a retired middle-aged bachelor caring for his ancient mother in the bustling central Roman district of Trastevere and being persuaded to take care of three other old women over a bank holiday weekend.His new film, The Salt of Life, is quite as good. It's also set in Di Gregorio's native Trastevere, and once more he plays a dutiful middle-aged son called Gianni with the outrageous nonagenarian Valeria De Franciscis Bendoni as his poker-playing, Krug-swilling mother. This time Gianni is married with a daughter, living on a modest pension but still at the beck and call of the imperious Valeria, who lives in a grand town house and is steadily diminishing her son's inheritance on a daily basis through her extravagant ways. However, because of her dotty vitality, the law regards this 96-year-old as compos mentis and won't give her son the power
His new film, The Salt of Life, is quite as good. It's also set in Di Gregorio's native Trastevere, and once more he plays a dutiful middle-aged son called Gianni with the outrageous nonagenarian Valeria De Franciscis Bendoni as his poker-playing, Krug-swilling mother. This time Gianni is married with a daughter, living on a modest pension but still at the beck and call of the imperious Valeria, who lives in a grand town house and is steadily diminishing her son's inheritance on a daily basis through her extravagant ways. However, because of her dotty vitality, the law regards this 96-year-old as compos mentis and won't give her son the power of attorney to restrain her.
Gianni's a kindly, decent, thoughtful man, who has his first cigarette of the day before getting out of his pyjamas and drinks too much white wine without being a guilt-ridden alcoholic. He has become a seemingly marginal but extremely valuable figure in many people's lives, all as vividly sketched as Gianni himself. "Transparent" is the word he finds to describe his own presence. His wife casually dictates a shopping list before going to work. His pretty daughter, ring in nose, equally casually devours the breakfast he's prepared for himself before going off to college. Her indolent, unemployed, pot‑smoking hippy boyfriend cadges food and grabs the morning paper when he eventually gets out of bed, which is after Gianni has taken his little Scottish terrier and a neighbour's St Bernard for a walk while doing the morning's shopping.
The film is packed with subtly observed details of behaviour and gesture of a kind we associate with Ealing comedy at its zenith, and an elaborate Chekhovian story is beingbefore we realise it. The movie's original title is the straightforward and at the centre of the narrative there emerges a story of discontent, unrest and sexual pursuit initiated by Gianni's best friend, the plump, Mercedes-driving lawyer Alfonso, a matter hinted at in the margins of Mid-August Lunch. Alfonso believes every middle-aged man should have a younger mistress, though whether he himself has the success he claims in this area is dubious. Not only does he implant this idea in Gianni's mind but he nurtures it. In its extreme form this involves him giving Gianni the visiting card of a Roman bordello, forcing a Viagra tablet into his mouth on the balcony of his flat as he tends his flowers, washing it down with water from the spout of a watering can, and dispatching him by car with a map that he can't read without his glasses. This is the point when the constant chuckles elicited by an unerringly truthful film give way to unrestrained laughter. But we always laugh with Gianni, not at him. He never becomes pathetic, is never degraded. He's a romantic, and there isn't a trace of lechery or malice in him.
His pursuit of love takes in his mother's young carer (who dreams of him, though not as a lover but a grandfather), a ditzy girl in the same apartment, the recently divorced daughter of his mother's poker-playing chum, and an old friend from his schooldays whose name he finds in his address book. There are two wonderful set-pieces. In one Alfonso involves Gianni in a double date with two pretty blond twins, an expensive, embarrassing alfresco lunch that recalls Oscar and Felix's date with the Pidgeon sisters in The Odd Couple, but handled with greater finesse. In the other, Gianni can find no private place in his flat, where his daughter is throwing a louche student party, and has to make a phone call from the apartment's open lift, which inevitably transports him downwards. Gianni doesn't want to be "one of those funny old guys taking their dogs for a walk", but that's probably what he must settle for – with accompanying sexual fantasies.
Talking of The Odd Couple brings to mind the comedians with similarly long, sad, doggy faces like Di Gregorio's. He's like a subtler Fernandel, Walter Matthau but less misanthropic, Jack Lemmon without the self-pitying tetchiness. He is a true charmer, seemingly unaware of the attraction he exerts and thus incapable of exploiting this remarkable asset. It is a pleasure to be in his humane company, his film is an adult experience, and the older you are the more adult it will appear.
His new film, The Salt of Life, is quite as good. It's also set in Di Gregorio's native Trastevere, and once more he plays a dutiful middle-aged son called Gianni with the outrageous nonagenarian Valeria De Franciscis Bendoni as his poker-playing, Krug-swilling mother. This time Gianni is married with a daughter, living on a modest pension but still at the beck and call of the imperious Valeria, who lives in a grand town house and is steadily diminishing her son's inheritance on a daily basis through her extravagant ways. However, because of her dotty vitality, the law regards this 96-year-old as compos mentis and won't give her son the power of attorney to restrain her.
Gianni's a kindly, decent, thoughtful man, who has his first cigarette of the day before getting out of his pyjamas and drinks too much white wine without being a guilt-ridden alcoholic. He has become a seemingly marginal but extremely valuable figure in many people's lives, all as vividly sketched as Gianni himself. "Transparent" is the word he finds to describe his own presence. His wife casually dictates a shopping list before going to work. His pretty daughter, ring in nose, equally casually devours the breakfast he's prepared for himself before going off to college. Her indolent, unemployed, pot‑smoking hippy boyfriend cadges food and grabs the morning paper when he eventually gets out of bed, which is after Gianni has taken his little Scottish terrier and a neighbour's St Bernard for a walk while doing the morning's shopping.
The film is packed with subtly observed details of behaviour and gesture of a kind we associate with Ealing comedy at its zenith, and an elaborate Chekhovian story is beingbefore we realise it. The movie's original title is the straightforward and at the centre of the narrative there emerges a story of discontent, unrest and sexual pursuit initiated by Gianni's best friend, the plump, Mercedes-driving lawyer Alfonso, a matter hinted at in the margins of Mid-August Lunch. Alfonso believes every middle-aged man should have a younger mistress, though whether he himself has the success he claims in this area is dubious. Not only does he implant this idea in Gianni's mind but he nurtures it. In its extreme form this involves him giving Gianni the visiting card of a Roman bordello, forcing a Viagra tablet into his mouth on the balcony of his flat as he tends his flowers, washing it down with water from the spout of a watering can, and dispatching him by car with a map that he can't read without his glasses. This is the point when the constant chuckles elicited by an unerringly truthful film give way to unrestrained laughter. But we always laugh with Gianni, not at him. He never becomes pathetic, is never degraded. He's a romantic, and there isn't a trace of lechery or malice in him.
His pursuit of love takes in his mother's young carer (who dreams of him, though not as a lover but a grandfather), a ditzy girl in the same apartment, the recently divorced daughter of his mother's poker-playing chum, and an old friend from his schooldays whose name he finds in his address book. There are two wonderful set-pieces. In one Alfonso involves Gianni in a double date with two pretty blond twins, an expensive, embarrassing alfresco lunch that recalls Oscar and Felix's date with the Pidgeon sisters in The Odd Couple, but handled with greater finesse. In the other, Gianni can find no private place in his flat, where his daughter is throwing a louche student party, and has to make a phone call from the apartment's open lift, which inevitably transports him downwards. Gianni doesn't want to be "one of those funny old guys taking their dogs for a walk", but that's probably what he must settle for – with accompanying sexual fantasies.
Talking of The Odd Couple brings to mind the comedians with similarly long, sad, doggy faces like Di Gregorio's. He's like a subtler Fernandel, Walter Matthau but less misanthropic, Jack Lemmon without the self-pitying tetchiness. He is a true charmer, seemingly unaware of the attraction he exerts and thus incapable of exploiting this remarkable asset. It is a pleasure to be in his humane company, his film is an adult experience, and the older you are the more adult it will appear.
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