Yesterday I saw a good one.
In an interview, Gianni Di Gregorio, who has starred in, directed, and written “Gianni e le Donne” (The Salt of Life) said that he was inspired by the old, classic Italian movies in a pretty interesting way: “The laughs were a kind of freedom when dealing with things that are very serious because they’d otherwise be hard to handle.” I get what he’s saying about the old films and I think that he’s doing just that really well in his movies.
For whatever reason, in America we always talk about men in terms of “mid-life crisis” and I’ve never really had much patience with the whole concept. Oh, boo hoo, you’re getting old; is that really a reason to cheat on your wife? I still don’t think it is, but at least after having watched “Gianni and the Women” I feel a little more generous to these “men of a certain age”.
Gianni Di Gregorio plays Gianni (again – his “Gianni” was brilliant in “Pranzo di Ferragosto”), recently retired and completely unprepared for an unscripted existence. He hangs around the house a lot and yet he doesn’t seem to spend much time there with anyone but the dog and his daughter’s mooching boyfriend, who also seems to hang around the house a lot. But he just doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’s always had his employer to give reason to his life. Now, in an obvious attempt to create the appearance of being needed, he does the shopping, runs errands for his aging mother, and walks the dog.
When his lawyer buddy tells him the thing that’s missing in his life is a mistress, he’s at first sceptical. But when he sees that even the decrepit old guy that hangs out on the sidewalk outside the bar all day, older than he is, has a lover, Gianni decides to give it a whirl.
I had a feeling that this movie would be good but I was wrong about why. I expected it to be funny, and it was, but I didn’t know how thoughtful it would be. I didn’t know that I would walk away thinking about how women aren’t the only ones who feel invisible as they age. Men are still luckier than women because there will always be young, unscrupulous women who think nothing of prying an older married man away from his wife and family (and that’s just not gonna happen for a woman), but sometimes there’s a reason for that. Maybe the attention is just too tempting if you feel like you’re fading away.
Gianni Di Gregorio is fantastic and should be getting more attention. One of the writers of the amazing “Gomorra”, he’s quickly becoming one of my favorites. Of all of the movies I’ve seen this time in Rome, this is the one I most hope will make it to American theaters.
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I Love Italian Everything 