The Salt of Life

Gianni Di Gregorio in person on June 1!

In his warm and witty follow-up to his 2010 sleeper hit Mid-August Lunch, writer-director-actor Gianni Di Gregorio has created another sparkling comic ode to the ladies in his life—but this time he plays a middle-aged retiree who has become invisible to all distaff Romans, regardless of age or relation. In The Salt of Life (Gianni e le donne), he contends with an aristocratic, spendthrift mother (again played by Mid-August Lunch’s great nonagenarian Valeria De Franciscis); a wife who is more patronizing friend than romantic partner; a daughter (played by Di Gregorio’s daughter Teresa) with a slacker boyfriend whom Gianni unwillingly befriends; and a wild young neighbor who sees him merely as a dog walker. Watching his “codger” friends snare beautiful younger women on the sun-kissed cobblestones of Trastevere, Gianni tries his polite, utterly gracious best to generate some kind of extracurricular love life—with both hilarious and poignant results.