Valeria

Trailer for The Salt of Life. Gianni, a recently retired house husband, has many things to worry about - but romance is not one of them. He lives with his wife and daughter in a small apartment in Rome. His days slip by walking his and his gorgeous neighbour's dogs, picking up cleaning and groceries, paying the bills under his wife's strict instructions, and being taken for granted by his daughter and her lazy, unemployed boyfriend, who seems to have moved in. His ancient mother, the aristocratically coiffed Valeria, a relic from a more glamorous era, lives with her pretty care-worker Cristina in a huge villa. From her crumbling HQ, Valeria is swiftly draining Gianni's resources on poker, repairs and expensive champagne, and thinks nothing of making him cross town to fix the reception on her television. One morning, his good friend Alfonso tells an astonished Gianni about his most recent sexual escapades. Somehow Gianni has completely failed to notice that his contemporaries are all taking a second bite of the cherry! Even old Maurizio who always wears a tracksuit has a younger lover. Alfonso decides Gianni should take action, reinvigorate his life and get himself a girlfriend. But, despite his best efforts with some old female acquaintances interrupted by an endless stream of calls from his demanding mother and a dose of Viagra, poor old Gianni is like a rusty old motor. The spark is ignited but it is going to take a long time to get back him on the road to romance!

In his warm and witty follow-up to the 2010 sleeper hit Mid-August Lunch, writer-director-actor Gianni Di Gregorio has created another sparkling comedy--this time with a dash of the bittersweet. In The Salt of Life, Gianni plays a middle-aged retiree who has become invisible to all distaff Romans, regardless of age or relation. He contends with an aristocratic, spendthrift mother (again played by Lunch's great nonagenarian Valeria de Franciscis); a wife who is more patronizing friend than romantic partner; a daughter (played by Di Gregorio's daughter Teresa) with a slacker boyfriend whom Gianni unwillingly befriends; and a wild young neighbor who sees him merely as her dog walker. Watching his 'codger' friends snare beautiful younger women 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.

Model Valeria gives her take on 'Models of the Runway' Season 2 Episode 9, in which she was paired with designer, Seth Aaron Henderson and wore his daytime look inspired by the distinct NYC neighborhood, Harlem. Episode air date: 03/18/10.