FILM

Italy 2010 89 mins Subtitles Dir: Gianni Di Gregorio  Starring: Gianni Di Gregorio, Valeria De Franciscis, Alfonso Santagata, Elisabetta Piccolomini, Aylin Prandi, Teresa Di Gregorio, Kristina Cepraga, Valeria Cavalli

Less solipsistic and annoying than his self-consciously upmarket fellow countryman Nanni Moretti, who operates in similar territory, writer/director Gianni Di Gregorio won a heap of international film festival awards for his 2008 directorial debut, 'Mid-August Lunch'. In this sequel of sorts, Di Gregorio plays another frustrated and put-upon middle-aged gent named Gianni, who remains firmly under the thumb of his imperious mother (played, as before, by redoubtable 95-year-old Valeria De Franciscis). That's where the similarities end, however, as this Gianni is a retired, married chap with a teenage daughter (Teresa Di Gregorio - yes, his real-life daughter). We first meet him trying to hoodwink the profligate yet sharp-witted old crone into signing over control of her property. Gianni's silver-haired lothario of a lawyer, Alfonso (Santagata), then suggests that what he really needs is an affair. After all, everybody's at it. Even the unappealing, tracksuit-wearing old barfly down the road is carrying on with the tobacconist's wife.

There's no shortage of contenders: an old flame (Cavalli), momma's buxom carer Kristina (Cepraga), the hot party girl neighbour (Prandi) whose dog he walks… But Gianni is alarmed to find that advancing years bring with them an invisibility to young women, and those who do notice him treat him as a grandfatherly figure. There's much male menopausal disappointment to enjoy here, but it isn't quite as focused as 'Mid-August Lunch', being more episodic and veering in tone from bittersweet to the kind of broad comedy that wouldn't be out of place in a US teenflick: notably Gianni's inadvertent acid trip and his desperate race to find a brothel before his Viagra-induced erection subsides. (Robin Askew)

website www.corriere.it/giannieledonne/

Opens: August 12

Copyright Robin Askew 2011