Rated General
75 minutes
Dir: Gianni Di Gregorio, Italy, 2008
Gianni Di Gregorio, Valeria De Franciscis, Marina Cacciotti
In Italian with English subtitles.
Digital projection. Winner of 8 Festival & Critics’ Awards.
“It’s no secret that many Italian men stay at home with mamma until they get married, or at least until mamma finally kicks them out into the big, bad world. But this low-key Italian charmer takes that idea to extreme lengths. Writer-director Gianni Di Gregorio plays Gianni, a placid Roman in his fifties who lives with his elderly mum Valeria, a refined 80 year old who always looks like she’s dressed for dinner at the Ritz back in 1963. This loving pair live in a comfortable city-centre apartment, surrounded by good furniture and knickknacks accumulated over many years, but we know they have little cash as the manager of their building comes knocking, wondering when they’re going to pay their service charges. In place of a cheque, Gianni agrees to look after the manager’s mother for the weekend. However, when the mother, Grazia, turns up, she has another relative, Maria, in tow. Within hours, Gianni has also agreed to take care of Marina, his doctor’s mother, which means he’ll be spending the mid-August holiday in the company of four women with a combined age of around 350. It’s a bit of a stretch to call this a comedy, even though it puts a warm grin on your face from beginning to end. The real beauty of the film lies in how Di Gregorio quietly realises the relationships between Gianni and the four women. These ladies might need a bit of looking after, but they still like to talk about boys, eat good food and even, in one case, wander off in the middle of the night for a furtive drink... This is very much a real and warm enterprise, not least because Di Gregorio extracts such lovely performances from his elderly cast. A treat.” - Dave Calhoun, Time Out London