Pranzo di ferragosto
Gianni di Gregorio (2008)
Matteo Garrone, who directed Gomorrah, and Gianni di Gregorio, who worked with him (and others) on its screenplay, joined forces for a second time in 2008 to make a film which could hardly be more different. Garrone produced; di Gregorio wrote, directed and plays the main part of Gianni, a sixtyish bachelor who shares a Rome apartment with his aged mother and finds himself giving hospitality to three more old women during the mid-August national holiday. I’ve a neurotic fear of uninvited guests invading the house so there were times when I shuddered – especially when the women want to extend their stay – but Mid-August Lunch also suffered from a more persistent incidental interference. Even at 75 minutes, the film is slightly tedious but the main reason I was relieved when it was over was the almost continuous laughter of one woman in the Richmond Filmhouse audience – a loud solo effort which seemed so alien to the mildness of the film’s humour that it got to be almost obstructive. It was only after we’d got out of the theatre that I felt I could see the film clearly. I enjoyed it more in immediate retrospect than as I was watching.
Their apartment is much bigger than Gianni and his mother (usually) need but it’s not clear why they’ve got so behind with the rent – or whether Gianni is out of a job or already retired. When Luigi, the ‘administrator’ for the apartment block, comes round to discuss the rent problem, he has a clear ulterior motive: he wants his mother off his hands for the holiday and he asks Gianni to do the honours, in exchange for some help with the rental arrears. The scene in which Gianni’s doctor, Marcello, asks for his mother to join the holiday ménage doesn’t make the same kind of sense: it’s Gianni, worried about a pain in his side, who’s asked the doctor to call round. Only after Marcello has examined and reassured Gianni that there’s nothing much to worry about does he suddenly insist that his mother stay. (Why doesn’t Marcello – knowing Gianni to be mildly hypochondriac – call round to enquire about the patient’s health, keeping the real reason for his visit up his sleeve?) For the most part, though, the screenplay is very skilful. The story may be simple but di Gregorio avoids the inherent risk of writing a miniaturist, undramatic piece – the risk of having so little happen that almost any forward movement of the plot can seem forced.
Mid-August Lunch presents a situation and discloses the characters in it: there’s (just about) enough to bring the story to a climax but there’s no artificial resolution and the development of the women’s reactions to each other is convincing. Gianni’s mother and Luigi’s mother, Marina, used to being the centre of attention, both sulk in isolation (and in their different ways) because they’re in a group and so in competition. Luigi’s Aunt Maria and Marcello’s mother, Grazia, are more grateful for the company. You get the sense that Mamma joins in eventually for fear of being left out – of others having fun. Marina absconds and Gianni finds her having a drink and a cigarette in a nearby café: when he gets her back to the apartment, Marina briefly tries to seduce him. (You know nothing will happen and you don’t want it to: by this stage, what the exhausted Gianni really wants is to sleep – on his own – and this is what you want for him too.)
Marina’s flirting with Gianni suggests geriatrics behaving badly – a potentially very tiresome idea. The film does have an element of this but di Gregorio judges it well and makes the consequences believable. The episode in the café and its aftermath are sufficient displays of independence to mellow Marina. Grazia, anxious to make the most of a day off from her doctor son’s vigilance about diet and medication, wraps pieces of cured meat round her finger and consumes them at a rate of knots when she first arrives in the kitchen of the apartment. That night, she takes the remains of a macaroni casserole to bed with her. Gianni emerges next morning to find all four women enjoying each other’s company. When one of them gives Gianni money to buy food for the lunch of the film’s title and, a little later, another bribes him to allow them to stay for an evening meal, it’s funny and poignant (so is their dancing together during the closing credits). Although they’ve talked about the importance of their memories, they seem to realise that they have an opportunity to enjoy something in the present and eventually they don’t want it to end. As far as Gianni is concerned, it means he continues to be put upon but it all helps with the rent.
The four women are a wonderfully contrasting collection of physical types – and their playing is very satisfyingly orchestrated. Gianni di Gregorio often shoots their faces in close-up and beautifies their extreme old age – especially that of Gianni’s mother (Valeria De Franciscis). We first see her, frail and unadorned, listening – inattentively – to the bedtime story (The Three Musketeers) that Gianni reads her. During the day, however, she determinedly gets dressed up and carefully applies her lipstick; her wrinkled, weather-beaten skin is proof of, as she says, ‘a life in the sun’. Marina Cacciotti, as Luigi’s mother Marina, is amusingly blowsy and her bulk helps to express Marina’s bolshiness. Maria Cali, as Aunt Maria, has a lovely gentleness – she seems both distrait and, at a deeper level, content. As the doctor’s mother, Grazia Cesarini Sforza has an inquisitive, playful sociability that is very appealing.
Gianni is, of course, the pivotal figure in the story. Gianni di Gregorio gives him a slightly melancholy benignity and manages to achieve what it is obviously crucial to the conception of the character: although Gianni is usually on screen, he seems to be in the background too. But there’s one moment during the lunch that brings him sharply into focus – a profile shot of Gianni failing to get a word in edgeways. You can see from this that’s the story of his life. Gianni always seems to be behind the beat: things happen too quickly for him – he’s too slow even to express his frustration. (There’s another good moment when Gianni sees Luigi departing for his holiday weekend – allegedly to join his family – with a remarkably young and pretty female companion, who is getting into his car.) What’s good about di Gregorio’s performance is that he doesn’t stress the pathos of Gianni’s situation. Looking after his mother and her guests may take it out of him and he has some regret about his life being as it is; yet you sense that he not only lacks the will to make it different but rather likes it this way. The three other men in the story are all well played too. (It appears from IMDB that very few of the cast, men or women, have acted professionally before.) Alfonso Santagata is Luigi; Marcello Ottolenghi is Marcello; and Luigi Marchetti is Viking, a vagabondish local, who gives Gianni a lift on his motor bike through the deserted streets of Rome, with all the shops closed for ferragosto, in a quest for the makings of lunch. Viking comes back to the apartment to join in the lunch then falls asleep on the bed that Gianni is longing to reclaim.
The cinematographer Gian Enrico Bianchi captures the – in my experience – distinctive quality of Roman light (the way that white buildings and deep, dark shadow combine to intensify it). The director and his editor Marco Spoletini get across the ralentissement induced by high summer heat – and di Gregorio cleverly uses the opening titles to establish this slightly dazed tempo. (The titles appear while Gianni and Viking are enjoying a mid-morning drink and desultory conversation outside a wine shop. Because you have one eye on the credits, the rhythm of the scene communicates itself without your quite noticing.) And it’s always good too to see Italian cuisine being prepared – as well as hearing Italians talk about the food as they prepare it.
21 August 2009
