Direction: Edoardo Ponti
Country: Italy
Based on the 1975 novel The Life Before Us by French author Romain Gary, The Life Ahead is one of those sad cases where the execution fails to do justice to a potentially great story. While we bath in the competent cinematography of Angus Hudson, the tediousness associated to the clichés allowed by director Edoardo Ponti becomes the film’s worst enemy. Aggravating the scenario, the soundtrack is tacky, while the scenes, one after another, lack authenticity.
The story follows Momo (Ibrahima Gueye), a 12-year-old Senegalese orphan living in an Italian seaside town. He's under the care of the aging Dr. Cohen (Renato Carpentieri), who entrusts him to the Jewish former prostitute Madame Rosa (the great Sophia Loren in her second collaboration with her son Ponti), a former prisoner in Auschwitz.
While the latter is giving occasional signs of dementia, Momo, recently expelled from school, works for a local drug dealer (Massimiliano Rossi). The anger mixed with the bad influences presumably make him a dangerous kid, but both Rosa’s friends - Lola (Abril Zamora), a former male boxing champ turned trans mother, and Hamil (Babak Karimi), a generous Muslim owner shop - see the contrary.
The performance of the young debutant actor has proved to be the most positive aspect of an unsatisfying tale where the energy peters out at a high speed, leaving you empty. Shamelessly manipulative, this formulaic debacle fails to offer something new; and even more important, something solid.
