By David Dent
Teenager Mattia (Laneikka Denne) lives a quiet life with her indulgent mother Mina (Dina Panozzo) and Yuma (Mayu Iwasaki), a pregnant family friend and also Mattia’s Food Technology teacher at school. Mina ekes out a living from making and selling homemade jams; cooking is in her blood. But Mattia’s world is thrown into chaos when Mina dies mysteriously, forcing her to live with her next of kin, Mina’s identical twin sister Carol (also Panozzo).
Carol is a freer spirit, something that causes concern for her partner Annika (Caroline Levien). She hosts an on-line show ’Cooking With Love’; the all women production team are also Carol’s close friends, and it’s in this new environment that Mattia thrives, dealing with her grief and developing new found confidence.
But Carol becomes concerned that her niece’s newfound spirit might not be altogether corporeal, and that Mattia’s increasing status as centre of her newfound family could be the work of her late sister.
Parish Malfitano’s bold, freewheeling film borrows equally from the bucolically lensed Australian new wave movies of the 1970s as it does from Italian horror of the same period; in the war beyond the grave plot there are echoes of Argento’s Suspiria, but the natural backdrop and focus on the almost magical powers of food belong to something far more pastoral.
Salt Along the Tongue won’t be for everyone; its near two hour running time doesn’t really ramp up the pace until the last fifteen minutes or so, but it’s impressive, independent filmmaking with a star turn from Panozzo.
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