Salt of Life – review

This thoroughly delightful Italian comedy by screenwriter-turned-auteur Gianni Di Gregorio is a kind of romantic realist-fantasia with Fellini in its DNA, and a little of Woody Allen. It is a continuation of his beguiling low-budget hit Mid-August Lunch, and also a very rare example of a movie whose starring role has been given to a real human being with a real human face. A gloomy househusband in late middle-age is dominated by his formidable mother, disenchanted by his marriage and obsessed with the last-gasp possibility of romantic adventure with one of the many attractive women who seem to cross his path. In any other circumstances, the role would call for a handsome, baby-faced former matinee idol in the style of Marcello Mastroianni. Instead, as in his previous film, Di Gregorio has exercised a directorial prerogative and cast himself. He is hangdog, melancholy, with a longing gaze made poignantly unattractive by heavy bags under the eyes, and yet with a young-looking, almost boyish frame, a good head of hair and a face that lights up with a nervous, heartbreakingly overeager grin whenever any of his putative conquests favour him with a smile. Gianni's nonagenarian mother, gloriously played by Valeria De Franciscis, querulously telephones him at all hours, demanding attention. Perhaps Salt of Life is an indulgent commentary on the Italian male in general and the toxic absurdity of Silvio Berlusconi in particular. But it is also about the terrible, onward march of old age. Gianni is tormented by the sight of women in the park, and also the old guys. He knows, in his heart, he is one of them. At one point, one of the old geezers simply looks up through the trees at the sunny sky: as if about to surrender his existence entirely. There is regret there, but longing also.