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Pranzo di Ferragosto, which has been translated into the title “Mid-August Lunch,” is the Italian holiday where almost everything shuts down, people leave the city and have a good meal. Imagine being too poor to leave and too devoted to an aging mother to do much of anything. That’s the setup in the short, minimal and enjoyable Italian film from director and writer Gianni Di Gregorio.
The story could not be farther from the gangster-driven “Gomorra” that he wrote with Maurizio Braucci, Matteo Garrone and others, but turns out to be based on his own time looking after his widowed mother. In debt and living at home with his mom, Gianni accepts a reduction in his tab by looking after the mother and aunt of his landlord. Sensing an opportunity, his doctor also pushes his mother onto him, and suddenly the stuffy Rome apartment is filled with four old ladies, one in her 90s, the others in their 80s. And they proceed to run him ragged, at first because they can’t get along, then later because they become close friends.