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The 86-year-old star’s expressive performance as a former sex worker caring for an orphaned child is the main draw in this sometimes formulaic tale directed by her son
In 1962, Sophia Loren won an Academy Award for her starring role in Vittorio De Sica’s Two Women (La ciociara), the first actor to triumph at the Oscars in a foreign language film. In 1965 she was nominated again, for De Sica’s Marriage Italian Style (Matrimonio all’italiana), before receiving an honorary award in 1991 for “a career rich with memorable performances that has added permanent lustre to our art form”. Now, Loren is reportedly in the running once more, this time for a standout late-career turn in The Life Ahead (La vita davanti a sé), adapted from the novel by Romain Gary, and directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. Recently tipped by Variety as a contender for the 2021 awards, the 86-year-old could become the Academy’s oldest best actress nominee while also breaking Henry Fonda’s record for the longest gap between acting nominations (41 years).
Loren plays Madame Rosa, a Holocaust survivor living in a southern Italian port, who cares for the children of sex workers – a profession in which she was once employed. Magnetic screen newcomer Ibrahima Gueye is Momo, the orphaned Senegalese street kid who snatches Rosa’s bag, only to have genially protective Dr Coen (Renato Carpentieri) force him to return it, and to apologise. At first, sparks fly between these two chalk-and-cheese characters, each proudly defiant in their own way. But the doctor seems to spy a kinship between their predicaments, and entreats Rosa to take Momo in – albeit at a price. As Rosa’s health declines (she is increasingly given to bouts of trance-like disorientation), it falls to Momo to become her saviour – a neatly inevitable reversal of fortune. Continue reading...