Synopsis
In seaside Italy, a Holocaust survivor with a daycare business takes in a 12-year-old street kid who recently robbed her.
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Cast
- Sophia LorenMadame Rosa
- Ibrahima GueyeMomo
- Renato CarpentieriDr. Coen
- Diego Iosif PirvuIosif
- Massimiliano RossiRuspa
- Abril ZamoraLola
- Babak KarimiMr. Hamil
- Malich CisséNala
- Simone SuricoBabu
- Nicola ValenzanoMolinari
Recommendations
- 88
New York Post
The actress is absolute bliss in her new Italian drama, The Life Ahead. - 80
The Hollywood Reporter
Slipping into the flavorful Neapolitan accent of her early years, Loren creates a warm-blooded, grounded character, whose feistiness ebbs slowly as the ravages of age, ill health and painful memory take hold. It's a lovely performance, full of pathos, from an esteemed actress whose wealth of experience illuminates this touching human drama. - 80
ABC News
Get out your handkerchiefs. Directed by her son Edoardo Ponti, Sophia Loren, 86, returns to the screen after a decade to play a Holocaust survivor who raises the children of prostitutes. There is not a single false note in Loren’s magnificent performance. Just sit back and behold. - 75
Chicago Sun-Times
While it is unabashedly sentimental and at times goes over the top with the symbolic melodramatic devices, it is a beautifully shot and heartwarming film, and the 86-year-old Loren is magnificent and regal and fierce and funny and beautiful and screen-commanding throughout. - 67
IndieWire
The Life Ahead is compelling enough to make the by-the-numbers narrative worth telling, if only because with such fine-tuned performances at its center, it deserves to be told. - 63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Ultimately, Ponti’s film survives on the one surprise that’s not much of a surprise at all: the power and majesty of his lead actress. And how did the director score such a casting coup? You’d have to ask his mother ... Sophia Loren. - 63
Movie Nation
Pairing Loren up with a child with this much spark, acting-up and acting-out, proves to be a winning formula for the film. - 63
Slant Magazine
With its tough-minded characters from divergent cultures finding a common bond despite their differences, the film doesn’t deliver much in the way of surprises, but it turns out to be a starker and more honest piece of work than it might initially seem.
