By Steve Crum

The other day I rewatched a favorite Sophia Loren film, Boy on a Dolphin, a literally colorful 1957 flick in which she co-starred with Alan Ladd. Loren was 23 then, and an emerging Hollywood star. Four years later, she had emerged big time with her Best Actress Oscar for Two Women. Now, after decades of accolades and awards for her movie work, Loren stars in The Life Ahead, her first feature since 2009’s Nine. 

At 86 years, Sophia Loren returns in a triumphant, Oscar worthy performance.

In a rework of 1977’s Madame Rosa with Simone Signoret in the title role (based upon The Life Before Us by Romain Gary), Loren portrays Rosa, a Jewish Holocaust survivor and former prostitute. Unlike Signoret’s French take, this Rosa is Italian—with English subtitles, by the way.

Loren’s son, Edoardo Ponti, both directed and co-wrote the screenplay. 

The story involves the elderly Rosa, referenced as “Madame Rosa,” who has for years retired to a rather meager life of caretaking the children of local Bari, Italy prostitutes. (Filming was in Bari.) But she is content, and helps raise her wards with strict, often religious, conviction. In fact, one of her current two children is a Jewish boy Rosa teaches Hebrew. 

The plot focuses early on to a 12 year-old street thief/drug pusher named Momo, vividly played by Ibrahima Gueye. Madame Rosa crosses his path when he steals her bag in the plaza, and knocks her down. It is beyond a challenge when she reluctantly agrees with her kind Dr. Cohen (Renato Carpentieri) to take him into her home. Momo is an orphaned Senegalese immigrant child who has hardened to living on the streets. 

Momo’s stubbornness to Rosa is adamant: “I don’t want to be like other kids!”

Various conflicts and hourly challenges occur as Momo maintains his street smarts behind the stern but loving back of Rosa. Momo becomes comfortable around his new “family,” which includes a boy his age as well as a toddler girl. The girl’s mother, Lola (Abril Zamora), is Rosa’s best friend as well as a working woman of the street. 

Rosa’s health takes a downturn, putting her in frequent catatonic states…and Momo’s stead slowly changes to caretaker. The transformation does not occur easily. Thanks to an incisive screenplay and sensitive direction, realism prevails.

Mention must be made of Babak Karimi’s sensitive portrayal of Hamil, a local shop owner who befriends Momo at Rosa’s insistence.

The Life Ahead is a wonderfully crafted character study of Rosa and Momo, both of whom fight the inevitable sad truths of the world.  

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GRADE on an A-F Scale: A-