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The last time we saw screen goddess Sophia Loren in a major film was 2009’s grim “Nine”, but you can be forgiven for forgetting director Rob Marshall’s catastrophic musical adaptation of “8 1/2” by Fellini because the brain often blocks traumatic experiences of this kind as a defense mechanism. (Imagine a movie where even Daniel Day-Lewis is terrible.) Such a release was unseemly for a legend, which is one of many reasons to be grateful for “The Life Ahead,” a new Netflix movie that provides 86 years old icon with its meatier role in decades. It’s a hard-minded rip that offers an antiquated view of contemporary concerns, drawing on enduring emotions like its protagonist.
Loren plays Madame Rosa, a former prostitute struggling to make ends meet in the Italian seaside resort of Bari. After retiring from the oldest profession in the world, Rosa ended up running a sort of ad hoc nursery (I guess technically more of a “Evening care”) for the children of sex workers. One of those guys has grown to be police chief, which is why local law enforcement is turning a blind eye to his operation which has become known in the neighborhood as “a shelter”. She first meets young Momo (Ibrahima Gueye) when he snatches her bag. The mocking and foul-mouthed 12-year-old is a Senegalese immigrant whose mother was murdered by his pimp, and it would seem to all observers that this boy is already a hardened thug headed for a bad end.
You probably know where it’s going, even if you haven’t read “Life Before Us”, the 1975 novel by Romain Gary from which the film was adapted, or seen its previous cinematic incarnation “Madame Rosa”, the winner of the Oscar in 1978 for Best Foreign Language Film in which Simone Signoret played the title role. The tough old street brat is a mismatch as old as the movies themselves (my favorite take on the story is probably 1980’s John Cassavetes’ Gloria) and the pleasures of ‘The Life Ahead’ lie in the confidence with which The film embraces these timeless tropes with just a few minor tweaks to bring the story to the present day.
The great thing is that they never speak. Momo doesn’t understand what those numbers tattooed on Madame Rosa’s arm mean and she has no intention of explaining it to him. But what the two manage almost immediately to smell about each other is that they have both been hurt, probably irreparably, and their friendship is based on this tacit understanding, along with a willingness to give each other some space. You keep waiting for the film to get mushy, for a bit of whiny, histrionic clamor to magically heal everything, but the characters instead keep quiet and often cover up for each other, even when they shouldn’t.
Loren commands the screen with the same leonine ferocity that led to her Oscar-winning role in Vittorio De Sica’s “Two Women” nearly 60 years ago, de-glammed and miserable but with an unmistakably regal bearing. The screen legend finds a fascinating pace with rookie actor Gueye, who is able to alternate the appearance of a tough thug and a beaming child depending on when he displays an often hidden megawatt smile. She also has great comedic chemistry with transgender lawyer Abril Zamora, who co-stars here as one of the working girls and kicks off a delightful intergenerational dance number that feels like a part but at the same time so much more.
Director Edoardo Ponti should know a thing or two about his star’s maternal ways. He is the youngest of Loren’s children with late producer Carlo Ponti, whose credits included film milestones from “La Strada” to “Doctor Zhivago” with many Antonioni in between. “The Life Ahead” has the beautiful cinematography and robust, crowd-pleasing qualities of a certain type of international film that was an arthouse bum at the box office here. (In an alternate timeline it would be sold out for six months straight at the West Newton Cinema.) Yet the film never completely slips into sentimentality, allowing these characters a measure of privacy that makes the inevitable melodrama even more poignant.
“The Life Ahead” is now streaming on Netflix.
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