Review: ‘Salt Along the Tongue’ begs to be licked

Gastro-horror meets folk horror in writer/director Parish Malfitano’s Salt Along the Tongue. Making for a scrumptious double feature with Peter Hengl’s Family Dinner, the film contains countless frames of food being cooked, enjoyed, and communed over. Food connects us all, as they say. But food can also be weaponized for spell-casting of ill intent and for carrying out our hearts’ most disturbing desires. Malfitano walks a delicate line between the celebration of food and the destruction of the physical body. Psychological and emotional terror collide with the devastating reality that food can so often be used for evil.

Mattia’s (Laneikka Denne) relationship with her mother is one of real intimacy, forged through life’s quietest and most honest moments of vulnerability. They bond over food and its place in culture, and the washing of Mattia’s long locks. Nurtured over many years, that closeness comes to a brutal end when her mother dies. She’s left to pick up the pieces and struggles to find meaning and purpose in her daily life. Mattia is sent to live with her aunt Carol (Dina Panozzo), who hosts her own cooking show and likes to get drunk. But that’s the least of Mattia’s problems.

Soon after arriving, a curse known as malocchio (or evil eye) takes root in her life, and she’s not the only one to feel its effects. Mattia’s dead mother possesses the young girl for protection from the sinister being that threatens her life. Food serves as the gateway to even more powerful sorcery, and the audience begins to wonder: who is actually in trouble here? Lines blur between reality and fantasy, leading into a hyper-stylized demonstration (think Ganja & Hess in its visual storytelling) and a haunting tale that dates back centuries.

Parish Malfitano plants Salt Along the Tongue firmly in his Italian heritage. And that’s evident through the human-rich script and intense focus on food culture and how it not only feeds our bodies but replenishes our souls. From Denne to Panozzo, the performances reach right out of the screen like some witch’s wart-riddled and gnarled hands. They’re equally heightened and grounded, allowing the viewer to be completely immersed in the lived-in story, but to also feel the larger implications around themes of companionship, redemption, and absolution.

Through expertly crafted camera work (that split-diopter shot!) and use of color, Salt Along the Tongue works overtime to tease the senses with overwhelming physical sensations and also provoke deeper consideration of how we, as a society, underestimate the power of food (particularly in the U.S.) and its ability to bring people together. Parish Malfitano invites you to take a seat at his table, and you’d be advised to accept. It’s worth it in all its mouth-watering glory.

Salt Along the Tongue is out now on VOD.