Mid-August Lunch: Review By harveycritic

MID-AUGUST LUNCH (Pranzo di Ferragosto)

Zeitgeist Films

Reviewed for MovieWeb by Harvey Karten

Grade: B

Directed by: Gianni Di Gregorio

Written By: Gianni Di Gregorio

Cast: Gianni Di Gregorio, Valeria De Franciscis, Maria Cali, Marina Cacciotti, Marcello Ottolenghi

Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 3/9/10

Opens: March 17, 2010 at New York's Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St.

Girls just want to have fun, sings Cyndi Lauper, and there's no logical reason to believe that "girls" ever outgrow this perfectly human desire. This point is driven home in just a brief seventy-five minutes by Gianni Di Gregorio, who wrote and directed "Mid-August Lunch" (Pranzo di Ferragosto, or "Ferragosto Holiday Lunch" in the Italian title). Using non-professional actors, the first-time director, who takes the major role and inhabits virtually every frame, delivers a witty, charming tale that may be too small-potatoes to afford it a top critical grade but is a diverting piece of pre-prandial entertainment.

In the story, the director, who uses his real name Gianni, is a fifty-something fellow living in Rome, which sounds pretty groovy until you see that as an unmarried man who in better circ*mstances might have his own bachelor pad, he lives with his demanding mother (Valeria De Franciscis). As the Roman equivalent of a nice Jewish boy, he cooks for his mom, reads her stories, watches TV with her, and generally does so much for the 80-something matriarch that she never complains about him or pressures him to meet women. He is financially strapped, unable to pay his electric bill for three years, so when his condo manager, Viking (Luigi Marchetti), agrees to cut his rent if he would to take in his mother, Marina (Marina Cacciotti) and Aunt Maria (Maria Cali) for "just a couple of days," he reluctantly agrees. When his doctor (Marcello Ottolenghi) makes a similar request, to take in his own mother (Grazia Cesarini Sforza), the condominium turns into a de facto home for geriatrics.

Just when we in the audience begin to feel terribly sorry for Gianni-who should have been living la dolce vita with a woman his own age instead of dissolving his pain in Chablis and smokes-the atmosphere in the flat turns surprisingly vibrant. The elderly ladies, who look like the cast of Frank Capra's "Arsenic and Old Lace," begin to bond.

"Mid-August Lunch" evinces our feeling that these people are as human as they were when they were in their twenties, eager for socializing, one of them even having an erotic fantasy about her benefactor while trying to seduce him. Grazia, under orders from her son the doctor to eat steamed vegetables, sneaks away with her favorite dish, macaroni and cheese, and who can blame her? Italy is the home of the world's best cuisine (sorry China and France). She seems none the worse for her culinary indiscretion.

Di Gregorio may be the director, but he appears to give the women the authority to act their parts according to the mood of the day. The ladies who lunch are a charming bunch, appreciative of their host's cooking and good nature, while the entire picture, small though it is, is heads and shoulders above the usual TV sitcoms. Director of Photography Gian Enrico Bianchi gives us a Cook's tour of Rome's Trastevere section to indicate that like New York, Rome is not a big city but rather a series of small, friendly neighborhoods.

Unrated. 75 minutes. © 2010 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online