Butler's Cinema Scene

Gianni De Grigorio in “The Salt of Life”

“THE SALT OF LIFE”  My rating: B (Opening April 27 at the Tivoli)

90 minutes| No MPAA rating

The dirty old man has long been a generator of laughs. British comic Benny Hill made a career out of eye-rolling lechers; sitcom television is thick with thickening husbands who might dream a good game but no longer have the will or the skill.

Gianni Di Gregorio’s “The Salt of Life” might be viewed as an Italian “The Seven Year Itch.” But beneath the chuckles, something serious is happening.

Or maybe not. This is a very low-keyed, unassertive affair. You can view it as a pleasant toss-off or as a minor tragedy.

Writer/director Gergorio plays 60-year-old Gianni, involuntarily retired and now a househusband, holding down the fort while his wife goes to work and his daughter goes to college.

He’s a nondescript fellow whose dominant features are the prominent bags under his eyes. He looks like a cartoon Bassett hound.

Gianni and his wife sleep in separate bedrooms. They get along fine, but apparently passion is no longer on their must-do list. His mother (played by 96-year-old Valeria De Franciscis) is a wealthy widow rapidly burning up the family fortune with lavish poker games for her gal pals. She thinks nothing of calling Gianni to drive across town simply to adjust a plug on the back of her television. Being a well-mannered pushover, he always comes.

Indeed, Gianni feels neutered and needed only for the chores he can perform.

But when his lawyer friend Alfonso (Alfonso Santagata) urges him to take a mistress – every old man’s doing it, he says – Gianni starts looking at the world differently.

Everywhere there are beautiful, voluptuous women. His mother’s housekeeper is a knockout. So’s the twentysomething downstairs who relies on Gianni to walk her Saint Bernard and rewards him with granddaughterly hugs and kisses.

The park is filled with feminine beauty. The woman who runs the corner tobacco shop is stunning – and having an affair with an old guy in a track suit.

“The Salt of Life” is about a man who realizes he’s become invisible. Women simply don’t see him, unless there a task that needs an uncomplaining worker.

So who can blame Gianni for getting into the game one last time?

A Hollywood film on this subject would be a broad and raucous and rude. “The Salt of Life” is just the opposite. It’s quiet, almost mournful, but it has some very funny moments.

The humor, though, is generated almost entirely by the situations. Gianni doesn’t say much, and what he says isn’t particularly funny.  This would actually work as a silent comedy.

This is only De Gregorio’s second film, the first being 2008’s delightful “Mid-August Lunch,” in which he played a man forced to spend a long holiday in an apartment with his aged mother and her lady friends. You could argue that he’s too much the minimalist, that he needs to inject a bit more energy into his stories.

I’m not so sure. I believe his ruefully funny style holds the perfect approach to Gianni’s dilemma, providing it with the gravity it deserves (when a man finally realizes he’ll never again have sex, it’s a major moment) while never allowing it to turn maudlin or angry.

At last…a film that treats dirty old men with respect.

| Robert W. Butler