The Life Ahead Review: At 86, Sophia Loren Shines As Bright As Ever

The Life Ahead has finally dropped on Netflix, and starring the cinematic grande dame Sophia Loren, it is sure to leave you teary-eyed. Adapted from Romain Gray’s best-selling novel The Life Before Us, the story revolves around a Holocaust survivor who makes ends meet by watching the children of streetwalkers and various misfits who need a place to stay. The film marks Sophia Loren’s return to the big screen after a decade, so naturally the expectations had been high enough. With more than 90 films up her sleeve since her debut in 1950s, Loren is one of the last remaining links to Hollywood’s golden age. And with her performance in The Life Ahead, the 86-yearls-old actress proves that she is still as reassuringly robust and vital as she always was. In fact, critics all over the world are so enamoured, that talks about Oscar nominations are already underway.

The film is directed by Loren’s son Edoardo Ponti, whose direction is as slick as it is sensitive. It also stars Ibrahima Gueye, Abril Zamora, Renato Carpentieri, Babak Karimi and Massimiliano Rossi. Gray's novel had been previously adapted for cinema by Israeli director Moshé Mizrahi as Madame Rosa in 1977, which won the Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film. But unlike Madame Rosa which had been set in France, The Life Ahead is set in the city of Bari on Puglia, Italy.

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The Plot

Madame Rosa (Sophia Loren) is a Holocaust survivor and former prostitute who looks after abandoned and orphaned children and provides them with a place to stay. She is a strict but loving caretaker, who has lately been showing signs of dementia. Madame Rosa also keeps a secret room in the basement of her apartment building, where she sometimes goes to sit to feel safe— just as she did when she would hide under the floorboards at Auschwitz.

The story kicks off with Madame Rosa meeting a 12-year-old Senegalese refugee known as Momo (Ibrahima Gueye), who tries to steal her purse in the market one day. So when the neighbourhood doctor (Renato Carpentieri), who has acted as the boy’s previous guardian, begs Rosa to take Momo under her roof, she’s not exactly ready to welcome him with open arms. Momo, as we get to see, is a sullen and rebellious child who spends most of his time roaming the streets, dealing drugs and spending time with the very definition of the wrong crowd. On top of that, he and Madame Rosa already start their relationship on a bad note, so the rift between the two is immense.

But we soon understand, as does Madame Rosa, that Momo is a child more troubled than troublesome. And living amongst the company of people who start to care for him, from Lola (Abril Zamora), a transwoman who lives next to Madame Rosa to Mr. Hamil (Babak Karimi), an Iranian rugmaker who gives Momo a job and teaches him about literature and the value of honest work, we learn that there just might be hope for this young kid. Gradually, the icy relationship between Rosa and Momo also thaws: first comes truce, then understanding, followed by friendship and finally something akin to familial love blooms.

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A Heart-Warming Watch

Yes, upon hearing the premise of the film involving an elderly Jewish Holocaust survivor and a young Senegalese immigrant, one might think that it’s going to be 94 minutes full of sentimental drama. And in some ways, the film is so. But in other ways, it's really not. There’s an active effort on part of the filmmakers to make the audience invested in the characters’ fates. These characters are vulnerable, their livelihoods so fragile that you start to worry for them. The lush and timeless quality of the cinematography (Angus Hudson’s camerawork deserve a special mention) pulls you in with its warmth, and once you’re there, there’s no turning back. You already know how films such as these might end, but you still wonder where everything will go: will the final moments be as poetic as the sequences building up to it?

Words fall short to comment on Loren’s performance. Suffice to say that she exhibits a grace only an actress with her stature could muster. Ibrahima Gueye does a splendid job and is way ahead with his acting skills for a boy of his age, he is surely a young star to watch out for. The hodgepodge of international characters seeking refuge in Western Europe—from Middle Eastern to African, to Eastern European—played by actors of those particular cultures bring a kind of authenticity to the scenes, and to the film as a whole. Post-Holocaust trauma and the plight of social marginalisation is well captured and some scenes, like that of the police routing African immigrants from their homes or that of Rosa’s memories of Auschwitz coming to haunt her bring about a sense of profundity to the film.

The Life Ahead is a nice, cosy watch that deserves all the accolades it is getting. But out of an abundance of caution, keep a box of tissues handy when you sit to watch the film, for it is sure to pull your heartstrings in ways more than one.

Picture Credit: Variety magazine

Views expressed are the author’s own.