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Pranzo di Ferragosto is the Italian cinematic sensation of 2008.
The director (leading/supporting actor for the elderly) Gianni Di Gregorio, debuts as a director at the age of 57 and wins the David di Donatello for Best Director!
It's hot in Rome, Gianni and his elderly mother are alone, broke, and in debt, but they seem to take it in stride, or rather, they don't seem to mind too much.
Gianni goes down, does the shopping (on credit), and has a sip of wine with his childhood Viking friend (the Viking plays himself and really grew up with Gianni, both from Trastevere).
Trastevere is semi-deserted, a middle-aged German tourist couple passes by, and the Viking says, look how white they are... they look like they've been washed with bleach!
As it happens, the building manager also has an elderly mother. He wants to take a vacation at least during Ferragosto and wants to leave the old lady with Gianni since he's staying in Rome come on, I'll deduct a bit of the debts you have with the building...
In short, I won't tell you the whole story, but for the same reasons other elderly and lonely women will be brought to Gianni's and his mother's house, and they will all be together for Ferragosto and have lunch together.
Living together isn't easy; there's arguing over the TV that doesn't even work properly...
From the director's notes.
Di Gregorio, to choose the 4 protagonists for the lunch, selected 100 old ladies (I would have taken them all, they were all fine, but in the end, I chose these 4).
He was nothing short of amazed by the vitality of the ladies, who acted and worked on the film tirelessly, a film shot in a house with a crew of 40 people, with electric cables, the camera, the lights, you know what a set is, right? At the end of the shooting in the evening, the crew was exhausted, but not them. They said, so what are we doing tomorrow? How will you style my hair?
Often the first take was good enough because they were so natural and at ease, and often the ladies didn’t stick to the assigned dialogues but improvised, and Di Gregorio let them do it, recognizing that their lines were better than the ones he had written she brought the cake, that was nice, but come on... you can't cover a cake with a bidet towel!
The film is amusing, poetic, and delicate and deals with the problem of the solitude of the elderly with sweetness and a positive attitude, never resorting to drama in its notes or details, it's a film that lightens the heart.
Truly, an unusual Italian comedy that smells of times past but is very much contemporary and immersed in the present, a unique case in the stifling panorama of Italian cinema over the last 20 years.
Di Gregorio gave carte blanche to the ladies, but what should we do? ...nothing, stay home, chat, eat as if it were all real!
The result is astonishing; considering they were non-professional actresses, they succeeded marvelously, it doesn’t even seem like a film it's so realistic, it seems like a reportage, a documentary, something like that.
Partly a true story, Gianni really lived with his mother in Trastevere on Viale Glorioso, and they had substantial debts with the condominium, 20 million lira. The old mother spent all the inheritance left by the father hey mom... we have to pay the condominium, don't spend all this money! Oh, come on, who cares... uh! The condominium? Just forget about them!
Gianni shot the film in his house, and the manager thought that with the film's earnings he would settle the debt, and that's what happened.
Pranzo di Ferragosto has traveled the world, it was in Venice, it was even appreciated in Norway.
Ferragosto
The summer heat coagulates emotions
Quirky flies pirouette in the air
The sun is a dull oven that burns the mind
Nerves jump like crazy springs
The asphalt evaporates in gaseous mirages
A child whines because he's thirsty, the stressed mother hits him
It's Ferragosto, and summer slips away, and vacations are like the hour of air for the prisoner
A granita?
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