Average Rating: 7/10
Reviews Counted: 56
Fresh: 49 | Rotten: 7
Thoughtful, warm-hearted, and delightfully free of pretense, Mid-August Lunch offers viewers a light diversion with some surprising depth.
Average Rating: 7.2/10
Critic Reviews: 11
Fresh: 9 | Rotten: 2
Thoughtful, warm-hearted, and delightfully free of pretense, Mid-August Lunch offers viewers a light diversion with some surprising depth.
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Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 3,689
A man unexpectedly finds himself talking care of four women, three of whom he barely knows, in this sunny comedy from Italy. Gianni (Gianni di Gregorio) is a man in his mid-sixties who still lives with his mother; given that Valeria (Valeria De Franciscis) is well into her nineties, these days he looks after her rather than the other way around, though she remains quite spry given her age. Gianni and Valeria share an apartment in a building owned by Luigi (Alfonso Santagata); Gianni owes money
Unrated, 1 hr. 15 min.
Apr 1, 2009 Wide
Oct 5, 2010
$0.7M
Zeitgeist Films
All Critics (58) | Top Critics (11) | Fresh (50) | Rotten (7) | DVD (1)
A simple and endlessly charming look at a weekend in the life of an uncomplicated middle-aged man living with his aging mama.
Mid-August Lunch is a sweet-spirited gem, warmly comic while showing the hassles of caring for aging relatives more honestly than 10 family sagas from Hollywood.
A tasty tidbit of a film, Mid-August Lunch is one of those movies where almost nothing happens but it happens quite nicely.
If Mid-August Lunch were a meal instead of a movie, it would be something light and quick, but not entirely unsatisfying. A green salad with a couple pieces of grilled shrimp on top, say.
You'd have trouble finding another movie with such unforced appreciation of its elderly characters or such intelligent understanding of old age.
The droll Mid-August is a tribute to the gentle skills of Italian filmmaker Gianni Di Gregorio, who not only wrote and directed this unhurried chamber piece but also starred in it as a character he named after himself.
[A] unique recipe, a bittersweet comedy/drama, with a dash of realism.
What a pleasure it is to see a film that treats the elderly as more just the sum of their age spots.
These women! These women are marvelous.
This is a small, perfectly delicious film. The actors are magical.
Novice feature director Gianni Di Gregorio has made a terrific and warm little comedy by only occasionally leaving his apartment in Rome.
It's a gentle meditation on food and companionship.
[Di Gregorio] draws wonderfully unfussy performances from his nonprofessional cast and ... produces a film which feels so natural that it seems to be capturing real life
An Italian comedy so slight it practically evaporates...
Charming but insignificant.
Not much happens in this wisp of a movie (it's barely 75 minutes), and not much is necessary; it's all about finding a mood and letting it sneak up and envelop the watcher.
Easy as a Sunday morning ...
A delightful homage to the simple pleasures that life can offer no matter the age.
In "Mid-August Lunch," middle-aged Gianni(Gianni Di Gregorio, who also directed and co-wrote) takes care of his mother(Valeria De Franciscis). This leaves him with precious little money to pay the bills, like the electric which has not been paid in three years. That's all right, says Alfonso(Alfonso Santagata), the
August 23, 2011Super Reviewer
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