Mid-August Lunch

Pranzo di Ferragosto

(Italy, 2008, 75 mins, 35mm)

PROD: Matteo Garrone
SCR: Gianni Di Gregorio
CAM: Gian Enrico Bianchi
ED: Marco Spoletini
MUS: Ratchev & Carratello
Cast: Valeria De Franciscis, Marina Cacciotti, Maria Cali, Grazia Cesarini Sforza, Alfonso Santagata

In Gianni Di Gregorio's delightful debut, an obliging middle-aged son finds himself catering to a spry but temperamental geriatric foursome--including his own mother. On the August holiday of Ferragosto, that celebrates the ascension of the Virgin Mary into heaven, pretty much the entire city of Rome empties out. Unfortunately for Gianni (played by the director himself), nursing a mountain of debt as well as his elderly mother Valeria, there is no easy escape. When the building manager realizes that he too can pawn off his own mother on Gianni (in exchange for forgiving a certain number of debts), the gray-haired quotient begins to escalate.

Buoyed by a superb cast of non-professionals, and a fine script from Di Gregorio (who previously penned Gomorrah), Mid-August Lunch does not spare the more difficult and intractable issues that attend aging in Italy. Rather it views such with the wryness, humour and balance that only come with age and wisdom. "It's a wonderfully patient, delicately observed film; warm, generous, never for a moment sentimental or patronising, never exploiting dottiness and eccentricity. The performances of the old ladies are pitch-perfect and by the end, Di Gregorio's casting of himself as Gianni seems both essential and inevitable."--The Observer

Winner, Lion of the Future (for best first film), Venice 2008.

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