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To call Parish Malfitano’s sophomore feature, Salt Along the Tongue, a straight up horror film feels like a disservice to the experience of watching this magnificent melodrama-adjacent film. Yes, there are most certainly horrific elements – blood features heavily throughout the film, upsetting tales about the symbiotic relationship between wasps and figs are told, bodies float in the air in unsettling ways, boils and scars emerge in haunting ways on the legs of characters, and of course, the thematic backbone of Italian witches that feature within the film – but Salt Along the Tongue instead feels more like a familial, motherly drama in the vein of Pedro Almodovar’s work.
Yet, even calling Salt Along the Tongue an homage to Alomdovar feels like it’s doing a disservice to Parish’s work here. This is, much like his first film, a distinct work syphoned from the mind of Parish Malfitano, and in the realm of Australian cinema, that is a blessing.
Salt Along the Tongue follows Laneikka Denne’s Mattia, a teen girl who struggles to find her place in the world being bullied at school and simply unable to be herself. It’s a reality that’s thrown into further turmoil when her mother unexpectedly dies, with Mattia having to move to live with her aunt, Carol (Dina Panozzo), who also happens to be her mothers identical twin. Yet, Carol is distinctly different than Matthia’s mother, with her aunt having an exuberant personality that, when married with her complicated relationship with alcohol and the cooking show she records with her coven of friends, causes Matthia’s life to shift in ways she doesn’t know how to fully navigate.
This is just the surface of what Parish is working with in Salt Along the Tongue, a film that features an almost completely women led cast, and acts as an ode to mothers and the hardships that men have put upon them in the world. Shot with a stunning colour palette that plays out at times like an aurora gracing through the sky, and at others like a freshly slaughtered chicken, blood dripping everywhere, Salt Along the Tongue is a film full of supreme confidence, driven by a vision to explore Parish’s Italian heritage in an Australian setting.
The co-lead of the film, Laneikka Denne, wisely said on Letterboxd that this does not feel like it was made in Australia in all the right ways, and they are completely right. There’s a brilliance at work here that feels diametrically opposed to the projects that funding bodies in Australia are supporting. Parish is not working alone in this capacity, with filmmakers like Alice Maio Mackay and Alina Lodkina each exploring personal narratives within Australian cinema, and in doing so, these filmmakers are shifting what Australian cinema is.
That notion of Australian cinema, as always, is embedded in my conversations with filmmakers, and the following discussion with Parish, recorded ahead of the films launch at SXSW Sydney on 18 & 19 October, explores his relationship with Australian cinema, his drive to tell stories that he wants to see on screen, and his journey through the creative process of making Salt Along the Tongue. While this conversation goes for fifty minutes, I feel like we barely scratched the surface of what’s at play within this vividly realised and sensorially invigorating film.
So, with that said, if you’re in Sydney, head along and see the film on 18 or 19 October. It looks like the 18th is sold out, so jump on board for the 19th if you can. Make sure to seek out Parish’s previous film, Bloodshot Heart, which is available on demand. And if you want to find out more about Parish’s work head over to ParishMalfitano.com.
