Only a few days after making the presumption that, as with the last three Augusts, I wouldn't be seeing anything at the cinema this month, I returned this morning from a press screening of Italian comedy Salt of Life (Gianni e le donne), directed and co-written with Valerio Attanasio by Gianni Di Gregorio, who also stars.
Di Gregorio was one of the six principals who worked on the script for the 2008 crime film Gomorrah; who knows the extent of his influence on that film, but this, his second directorial effort after 2008's Mid-August Lunch, is a pleasant but not saccharine film, whose sensitive drama emerges from an astute comedy set against a subtly depicted social fabric. It's blessed with some excellent performances - notably, Di Gregorio's own, and that of 95-year-old Valeria De Franciscis as his onscreen mother - and does well to portray a coming-of-old age anxiety story against the backdrop of an increasingly contradictory world.
The film is released this Friday and you can read my fuller thoughts at Front Row Reviews.
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