The Salt of Life
(...) Di Gregorio's central concern here is the romantic life of his screen alter-ego: his feminised existence, as nursemaid to his mother and house-husband to a not-especially-sympathetic wife, is jolted out of its torpor when he notices the voluptuous home help employed by his mother.
Still, it awakens some long-buried desire to assert his masculinity, a desire only amplified by the sense that all the other ancient gents around him are snaring beautiful young things left, right and centre; and Gianni tries his polite, utterly gracious best to generate some kind of love life. He looks up old girlfriends, suffers the ambiguous attentions of his party-girl neighbour and, in one hilariously painful sequence, finds himself on a double-date with blonde identical twins.
This, of course, is material that in other hands could simply become toe-curling middle-aged leching, but Di Gregorio navigates his film with such a sense of delicacy that its tone is never coarsened. In some ways, The Salt of Life examines the other side of the coin, acting a comment on the sexualised nature of Berlusconi's Italy, where women are routinely encouraged to use their looks as a social bargaining chip.
Andrew Pulver, The Guardian
Original title: Gianni E Le Donne
Duration: 90 min
Dialogue: Italian
Subtitles: English
Age limit: K7
