The Salt of Life - In Cinemas from 15 December 2011

Director and lead actor Gianni di Gregorio follows up the charming and acclaimed hit Mid-August Lunch with The Salt of Life, showing in cinemas nationwide from 15 December.

Gianni, a recently retired house husband has many things to worry about but romance is not one of them.

He lives with his wife and daughter in a small apartment in Rome. His days slip by walking his and his gorgeous neighbour’s dogs, picking up cleaning and groceries, paying the bills under his wife’s strict instructions, and being taken for granted by his daughter and her lazy, unemployed boyfriend, who seems to have moved in. His ancient mother, the aristocratically coiffed Valeria, a relic from a more glamorous era, lives with her pretty care-worker Cristina in a huge villa.

From her crumbling HQ, Valeria is swiftly draining Gianni’s resources on poker, repairs and expensive champagne, and thinks nothing of making him cross town to fix the reception on her television.

One morning, his good friend Alfonso tells an astonished Gianni about his most recent sexual escapades. Somehow Gianni has completely failed to notice that his contemporaries are all taking a second bite of the cherry! Even old track-suit wearing Maurizio has a younger lover.


 
Alfonso decides Gianni should take action, reinvigorate his life and get himself a girlfriend. This awakens a long-buried desire within Gianni to assert his masculinity and he goes about looking up old girlfriends, suffering the ambiguous attentions of his party-girl neighbour and, in one hilariously painful sequence, finds himself on a double-date with blonde identical twins. But, despite his best efforts with some old female acquaintances interrupted by an endless stream of calls from his demanding mother and a dose of Viagra, poor old Gianni is like a rusty old motor. The spark is ignited but it is going to take a long time to get back him on the road to romance!

“This thoroughly delightful Italian comedy by screenwriter-turned-auteur Gianni Di Gregorio is a kind of romantic realist-fantasia with Fellini in its DNA” – The Guardian

“A timeless comedy about aging, for all ages.” –The Hollywood Reporter

Starring Gianni Di Gregorio, Valeria De Franciscis Bendoni , Alfonso Santagata, Elisabetta Piccolomini, Valeria Cavalli, Alyn Prandi, Kristina Cepraga, Michelangelo Ciminale , Teresa Di Gregorio

Written and directed by Gianni di Gregorio
 

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