Salt of Life

In his warm and witty follow-up to the 2010 hit "Mid-August Lunch," writer-director-actor Gianni Di Gregorio has created another sparkling comedy with a dash of bittersweet. In THE SALT OF LIFE, Gianni plays a middle-aged retiree who has become invisible to all the women of Rome, regardless of age or relation. He contends with a demanding mother (played by Lunch's great nonagenarian Valeria de Franciscis Bendoni), a patronizing wife, a slacker daughter, and a wild party-girl neighbor who uses him - as a dog walker. Watching his codger friends snare beautiful young girlfriends 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.