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After 13 years out of the world of cinema, the Italian actress returns to the cinema with the film Life before Yes, directed by her son Edoardo Ponti.
Edoardo Ponti traveled to his roots in southern Italy for film to retrieve his mother, Sophia Loren, with “Life in front of himself”, the drama about a Holocaust survivor who cares for abandoned children with whom mythical actress returns after more than a decade.
“With my mother I can repeat the same scene ten, twelve, fifteen times, who never, never, never in three times said to me ‘Edoardo, that’s enough, I can’t take it anymore’., But having that desire with 86 is a great lesson “, says the director in an interview with Efe.
It is the third time that the son directs his mother in front of the cameras. But this occasion seems even more special: it is Loren’s first feature film in more than ten years, shot in her homeland, in southern Italy, where she plays a strict and generous stepmother.
“That’s how I see my mother. I always want to show Sophia Loren, not as the diva, but as the actress, mother and artist I know,” Ponti says during the call with Efe.
During the conversation, Loren’s son with producer Carlo Ponti praises his mother, the discipline she instilled in him and an artisanal directing style, far from “ego” and “superficiality”.
Rediscover the roots
Loren, 86, whose last foray into film so far was Rob Marshall’s “Nine” (2009), is back with a new adaptation of Romain Gary’s novel The Life Ahead (1975), which has already been adapted to cinema in 1978, with the title Madame Rosa, played by Simone Signoret under the direction of the Israeli Moshe Mizrahi, and awarded with the Oscar.
In this new version for Netflix, Loren recovers the character of “Madame Rosa”, an elderly woman who begins a singular friendship with a very young Senegalese immigrant (Ibrahima Gueye) who has been orphaned.
Unlike the original work, instead of Paris, the story is set in Bari, a city in southern Italy where the beauty of the baroque streets and the light of the Mediterranean contrasts with the tensions of immigration and poverty.
“For her it was important to reconnect with her language (Neapolitan), because when she speaks the language she was born with, everything changes, the expressions, the face, the look …”, explains Ponti.
The director devoted much of his work on “Life Ahead” to ensuring that Ibrahima Gueye, the newcomer actor who at age 13 measures Loren as Momo, wasn’t blinded by the glow surrounding a star of greatness. of Italian.
“When you put two people who have big hearts and a sensitive soul together, it’s easy,” he says.
“He taught me to never give up”
Loren and Ponti spent more than a month in Bari with the young actor and his family to create a daily bond that would be transferred to the screen: “I wanted Ibrahima to meet Sophia as ‘the mother’, both at the beginning and at the end. of the movie. day, make him have breakfast and watch television with her. “
Thus, the iconic actress and the young debutante have built their chemistry on the screen under the eyes of Ponti, who at the same time continues to learn from her mother. “Never give up”.
When asked if he becomes obsessed with perfection after growing up among the geniuses of the seventh art, the director is clear that one of the most important lessons, influenced by neorealism, is the truth.
“It is not the search for perfection, but the search for an authentic moment – he describes -. As real as possible, to that moment of truth”.
“The Oscar is the memory of an unforgettable experience”
In a strange year for cinema, “Life Ahead” or in English “The Life Ahead” already sounds like a steady Oscar nominee, since Hollywood has placed many expectations on this Italian film which, moreover, has Laura Pausini responsible for his soundtrack.
A new nomination for Loren would have broken several records and brought the attention of these awards back to Italian celluloid.
“There is no doubt that it would be nice, but our Oscar is already in the heart and in the memory of an unforgettable experience”, says Ponti.
The director has always remembered that his family has remained far from the show and that is why he believes in cinema as something artisanal, as “being at the service of a work and not of the ego or superficiality”, values he seeks to to highlight this film “of inclusion and tolerance”.
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