Mid-August Lunch

Front Row at the Movies by Shirrel Rhoades

[mr_rating_result]

No, your calendar is not confused. “Mid-August Lunch” screens on June 4th.

This screening of “Mid-August Lunch” (original title: “Pranzo di Ferragosto”) is a fundraiser at Tropic Cinema for the Sons and Daughters of Italy. Attendees will receive a complimentary Duetto Gelato and a mini Italian cold cut sandwich to put you in the mood for this 2008 comedy directed by Gianni di Gregorio.

Di Gregorio stars in his own movie. His character, “Gianni,” is an unemployed middle-aged man who can barely afford to pay the rent for the Trastevere apartment that he shares with his 93-year-old mother. And here it is, the eve of the biggest summer holiday in Italy, the Ferragosto – an August 15 celebration created by Emperor Augustus as a day of rest after the agricultural season.

When Alfonso shows up to collect the rent he’s owed, clever Gianni proposes that in lieu of payment, he will watch the landlord’s mother while he goes off to a spa. Then Gianni gets finagled into also watching his doctor’s mother. And then still another woman. Plus his own mom.

Babysitting four elderly women – each with differing personalities. And the raucous Ferragosto festival about to unfold.

What could go wrong?

As Screen Daily sums it up: “So a gaggle of old ladies (the average age of the four actresses is 88) is left in a small apartment with a reluctant but long-suffering and well-bred host. The women bicker, throw sulks and make friends, while Gianni attempts to monitor their pill intake and pacify them with food.”

Critic Lee Marshall observes, “The film is dominated by the rich, worn hues of Rome in full summer. And the soundtrack – a faintly Balkan folk-jazz soundtrack of shrill trumpets and accordions – hits the right bittersweet notes.”

The film won the Grand Prix Award and the Audience Award at the Bratislava International Film Festival; the Luigi De Laurentiis Award at the 65th Venice Film Festival; and the Golden Snail Award at the Academy of Food and Film in Bologna (to name a few accolades).

A quintessentally Italian film, right?

Even so, it was remade in English in 2024 as the Irish film “Four Mothers.” I suppose mothers and sons are the same the world over.

Email Shirrel: srhoades@aol.com