Preview: AFS Selects 'The Salt of Life' Opening Friday

In The Salt of Life (with an Italian title better translated as Gianni and the Women), Gianni (Gianni Di Gregorio) is a sweet sadsack of a man, nearing 60 but already "retired" for nearly a decade. He is lonely but not alone, since he has a lovely wife, college-age daughter, concerned friend Alfonso (Alfonso Santagata), a sweet dog, and a nonagenarian mother. But it is the latter, played by Valeria de Franciscis, whose imperious manner and spendthrift ways are increasing the size of the Gucci bags drooping under Gianni's tired eyes.

If she has any "problem," large or small, Mama calls her only child and complains that she isn't feeling well and that he must come over right away. Once he arrives at her beautiful estate with a lush garden and rooms full of valuable art, Gianni quickly discovers that she simply needs champagne and sandwiches served to her ancient friends playing poker. With no job, Gianni is the go-to man for family shopping, for walking the dog, for picking up the laundry, for buying curtains from Ikea, and for adjusting the picture on Mama's TV. Apron strings were never so long or unbreakable.

That constant 24/7 connection would be bad enough, but Gianni can't afford his mother's irrational lifestyle any longer and has gone through his entire retirement savings account. The situation is funny, exasperating and very contemporary in an Italy racked by national debt. Gianni's mother is Italy, sweet, courteous, cultured and living way beyond her means.

At least for the present, to help Gianni forget monetary woes, his friend Alfonso suggests that Gianni needs a woman who will make him feel good about himself -- the macho solution sought by aging men, governed until recently by the absolute prototype Silvio Berlusconi. There is no lack of such geriatric roués around Gianni, beginning with Alfonso, who brags about his recent sexual romp with a girlfriend. Even one old codger on Gianni's block, Mauricio, is carrying on with a younger clerk at a nearby store.

So, fortified by such stellar examples, Gianni sets out on a quest, not just to get laid, but to have a romance just one more time, to bring that spark (or salt) back into his life. Despite the fact that he is married and has a daughter, we can't help but root for him. His first attempt ends up with the young object of desire relating a dream in which she saw him as her grandfather -- end of his own fantasy for sure. Back to the hangdog look. A double date with two lovely 30-somethings, arranged by always optimistic Alfonso, leads to nothing more than a café bill for 280 Euros. Still intent on finally scoring, Gianni tries to hook up with a recently divorced opera singer, who wants to move back to Rome and live in his mother's neighborhood. She succeeds with her desires, but Gianni certainly doesn't. Undeterred he calls his childhood sweetheart, who has time for a dinner -- if he cooks -- but simply must get to sleep before catching an early morning plane to Paris.

If The Salt of Life were an Italian movie set before the 1970s, the easiest solution would be the socially acceptable trip to the bordello. But Gianni insists that he must know the woman before being able to perform. Ever-ready Alfonso has the modern pharmaceutical solution and pops it right into Gianni's mouth. True to his nature, Gianni gets lost in traffic jams and unfamiliar parts of town. After about an hour of driving, Gianni is stuck at a stoplight and glances over into the next car (somewhat like the opening of Fellini's 8 1/2) and sees two middle-age nuns. He suddenly looks down toward his lap in surprise and perhaps a touch of horror. Only an Italian comic director would create a scene involving traffic jams, nuns, a Viagra-induced boner and a horrified man possibly afraid he is on his way to Hell.
 
The Salt of Life stars its writer/director, Gianni Di Gregorio, whose directorial debut Mid-August Lunch (2008) established this comic theme of a man suffering through his attachment to his mother. In the first film, Gianni was unmarried and living with his mother in a middle-class apartment, doomed to entertain and feed four other elderly women for a long weekend. At least in The Salt of Life, he has enjoyed marriage and a family. But the character of Gianni is virtually identical in both -- subservient to the women in his life and somehow wondering why he is invisible except when needed. It is that much more amazing to discover that this brilliant comic actor and master of hilarious situations is also one of the principal screenwriters of Gomorrah (2008), the relentlessly powerful and tragic story of young men drawn into Neapolitan mob life.

When deciding to write and direct his own films, Di Gregorio was deemed crazy in his insistence to focus on old people, not exactly guaranteed box-office winners. But after living with his widowed mother throughout the 90s, he had gained new respect for older people and their strengths and vulnerabilities in contemporary life. As he found himself approaching 60, he was also intrigued by his male peers and their methods of dealing with the encroaching loss of virility and attractiveness. With mothers having formed and affected their sons' psychosexual beings, merging the two themes became a great source of humor and inspiration for Gianni Di Gregorio. To be fair to his friends and his generation, he has taken the starring role himself, so every poke in the ribs and wink of the eye comes right back on the filmmaker, who has the rare gift of gentle mockery.

The Salt of Life opens at the Violet Crown Cinema on Friday, April 6. For this AFS Selects presentation, Austin Film Society members will get a discount starting Saturday, April 7. Visit the Violet Crown Cinema website for details.