Film news: The incidental director

Gianni Di Gregorio in a scene from The Salt of Life.

Gianni Di Gregorio became successful, suddenly, at 60. But what if he hadn't? How might his life have been? "Allora!" He shakes his head, gummy eyes a-twinkle. "Terribile! Dead under a bridge. Alcoholic, at least." He laughs, sips his wine and rolls a fag, and isn't kidding.

The Salt of LifeProduction year: 2011Country: ItalyRuntime: 90 minsDirectors: Gianni di GregorioCast: Alfonso Santagata, Gianni di Gregorio, Valeria Cavalli, Valeria de FranciscisMore on this film

What changed everything was Mid-August Lunch, which Di Gregorio wrote, directed, starred in and shot at his own flat. A gentle comedy about a man caring for his imperious 93-year-old mother, who then has three extra ageing mammas dumped on him by friends, it won the debut director prize at the Venice film festival in 2008 and hoovered up many other awards. It took ?7m round the world from a budget of ?400,000: a rare Italian arthouse hit, and one that relied on neither melodrama nor glamour (the average cast age nudged 80).

After a career backstage, first in theatre, then assistant directing and writing for film (most fruitfully on Gomorrah), Di Gregorio was thrust into the spotlight. "It was disorientating. But I see it almost as an act of providence. To be able to express yourself like that comes as a positive after years of forced enclosure within one's self. Perhaps I'm not being very rational today, but I feel it to be a natural compensation."

Good for the soul, then, as well as the wallet and, presumably, the personal life. After all, at the time he made Mid-August Lunch, Di Gregorio noticed an unwelcome development: women no longer noticed him. And when they did, it was paternally, not romantically. Nothing like new-found fame to change that, right?

"That's what I thought! Instead it became much more evident that the underlying problem – my age – remained the same. Younger women were out of bounds; not that they'd see me anyway. And older women also would consider me too old. That combination completely threw me. I didn't know what to do.

"It was at that point I began to develop this film as a therapy. Rather than despairing, like my friends, I would try to make light of it, to exorcise my fears." He flashes a sweet, fanged grin. "But as a therapy, it's been absolutely ineffective. Nothing has changed!"

The Salt of Life has Gianni back in a flat with a wife who hasn't shared his bed in years, a student daughter (his real-life daughter), a dog (his own) and no employment other than running errands for them. And for his mother, now in her own villa, living it up with lavish lunches, cared for by an attractive blonde – one of the women Gianni pursues after a pal urges him not to resign himself to a romance-free future. The others include a flirtatious neighbour whose St Bernard he dutifully walks round Rome, an operatic family friend, some identical twins, and an old flame who blames their split on his mother.

It's a view close to Di Gregorio's heart. "I think that mothers in Italy quite deeply affect the romantic and sexual lives of their sons, wherever you are on the social spectrum. Today even more so, because young men are held back by other forces. It's much harder to afford your own home."

Di Gregorio, an only child, was raised by fairly elderly parents under what he describes as formal conditions. His mother, whom he nursed for 10 years before her death, was, he says, "very kind, very lovely. But I was totally enslaved to her. She would say things in the nicest possible way, but it created a relationship that was absolutely impossible to move out of."

And for all The Salt of Life's sunny charm, the domestic servitude set-up feels frightening. Di Gregorio smiles. "Perhaps all those things like food and wine and sun and pleasure are another form of compensation for what is the underlying reality. If you reduce things to a skeleton, then life is terrifying.

"I didn't realise it at the time but it's a film about solitude. These themes of loneliness and melancholy I wanted to keep in the background, but somehow they were pervasive."

For a comedy, it seems steeped in dismay – isolation, even. What does Di Gregorio fear about ageing? "Mental immobility," he says, after a pause. And then: "The passing of that hope of love, of that idea that something still could happen. I think we should have those feelings for ever, until we're 100. But you have to take account of reality: one's own age; that of a potential partner. But that little flame must remain alive."

It's a moving answer: for its frankness and piquancy. And it turns out Di Gregorio is still married. It's clearly a complicated situation – The Salt of Life, he says, is 99% autobiographical. Does he feel it's inevitable that long-term relationships cool?

"You must not pretend a marriage won't have its up and downs, or that you'll have the same raging sex life after 30 years. The most important thing is respect. Not to hurl abuse. All it takes is one word to unhinge the whole edifice. But there are very personal things that happen to you that you can't begin to share with your partner. You can't go to your wife and say: women just don't see me any more. I have done it – my wife just laughed."

This gender difference is crucial, and it's something Di Gregorio is especially alive to. While Gianni's mother and her cronies in both films enjoy a blissful existence, thriving on Krug and the poker channel, the men are discontented. Are women simply not as persistently interested in sex?

He sees it less crudely. "In the end, we're all slaves of our desires and lusts. But women are better able to cope with the passage of time, while men are less accepting of change. They're in denial and they say an awful lot of bullshit – stories about romantic episodes that are completely untrue to big themselves up a bit. Men are much less mature, less able to regard themselves with irony."

Save Di Gregorio himself, perhaps. For its his combination of personal candour and slightly reckless benevolence that makes him such an unusual film-maker – maybe the most incisive male director to tackle domestic life since Bergman. But in the flesh, the person he reminds you of is Larry David: they share the same loose-limbed cheer, the same passivity in the face of female force, the same basic frustration, despite material ease. What separates them is confidence: Di Gregorio may be appreciative of attention – at a Q&A the night before, he seems to bloom – but he has miles less of it than you'd imagine.

Though the success of Mid-August Lunch may have saved him from a boozy end beneath a bridge, it appears to have only vaguely aided his sense of self-worth. "I'm not sure I have taken the acclaim onboard, or understand it myself properly. But people around me, my daughter especially, experience it with great joy. And my pleasure is in their pleasure; it's easier to access it like that. In reality, I don't give myself a lot in life apart from film – I'm always rather surprised and confused when someone gives me a present. It's almost as though I didn't exist."

It's a startling statement: when asked to unpack it, he gets smilingly tangled. The translator – who's known him some years – steps in to offer, with his assent, her analysis: "As a personality, Gianni has such a degree of self-abrogation he doesn't know how to feel those things directly. He's reserved, and that's why he has a sense he doesn't exist. But the pleasure he has in telling stories and making other people proud of him is easier to process."

It's sounds a dignified way to live, I say. Does he feel others veer too far the other way? "Yes. You shouldn't force yourself to be aggressively the protagonist."

How curious that someone who's finally found fame by making himself the hero should be so self-effacing. He nods: it is a strange space to inhabit. "It's not dignified to force yourself to be the centre of attention, but neither is it to suppress who you are. There is virtue in the right balance. It's just I'm incapable of finding it!"

The Salt of Life is released on 12 August.

View the original article here

Film news

Sunday, July 31, 2011

The incidental director

No comments:

Post a Comment