Polamar, Netflix in Association with Artemis Rising Foundation presents Sophia Loren (Madam Rosa), Ibrahima Gueye (Momo), Renato Carpentiere (Dr. Coen), Losif Diago Pirvu (Losif), Abril Zamora (Lola), Babak Karimi (Hamil), Simone Sirico (Babu). Director, Edoardo Ponti; Screenplay by Romain Gary: Collaborating Writer, Fabio Natalie; Cinematographer, Angus Hudson; Producer, Carlo Degli Espositi, Regina K. Scully, Nicola Serra; Executive Producer, Geralyn White Dreyfous. © 2020
I would like to mention these specifics about this film before going further: the director is directing his biological mother, their third collaboration, though. And the original movie is in Italian. In 1977, Simone Signorel as ‘Madam Rosa’ won Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Today, Madam Rosa is rechristened, The Life Ahead. It is not really bad for a film title. It foretells the end of the principal player’s glorious life, Sofia Villani Scicoone, Dame Grand Cross OMRI, screen name, Sophia Loren. Life after stardom, when the lights on the movie sets are shut off, the bubble of glamour and pageantry wears off. We come down to earth and live with everyday neighbors’ reality. We only have one thing to do: We look to The Life Ahead.
, When Lola (Abril Zamora) and Babu (Simone Sirico) get off of a van from visiting her father, she steps in the door to see Madam Rosa (Sophia Loren). And to drop off Babu. She sees Momo (Ibrahima Gueye) up at the landing, with a terrifying face. “Momo?!” She calls out. “Momo!” she calls again. Momo drops empty plastic water jogs and ran from the scene, and Lola chases after him. Momo barricades himself in the basement room, alone with the dead body of Madam Rosa. Madam Rosa had died in his care.
It is a little wonder how our lives meet and crisscross with each other. Momo is an abandoned kid in this Italian city’s streets, haphazardly in Dr. Coen’s (Ronato Carpentiere) care. He lives on the streets and snatches pocketbooks from older ladies. He snatches a bag with two antique candlesticks and brings them to Dr. Coen’s residence. He will not accept stolen properties on his premises and forces Momo to tell him where he got it from. This is how Momo and Madam Rosa met and made an everlasting friendship. Madame Rosa, a former hooker, now provides homes to hookers and abandoned kids in her old age.
It was tough for Madam Rosa to accept the proposal put to her by Dr. Coen to keep Momo. Madame Rosa’s hand is full. She has Babu, a three-year-old whose mother, Lola, runs in and out of the boy’s life but runs the street. And Losif. His mother abandoned him a long time ago but once in a while sent Madame Rosa money. She had always promised to come to take the boy away one day. Madame Rosa, too, doesn’t feel as healthy as she was a long time ago when she had a house full of abandoned kids. One of his wards became a police chief; hence, the inspectors left her alone.
Dr. Coen and Madame Rosa:
Her, “You left your thief in my house!”
Him, “Six hundred euros.”
Her, “I still have my rent money.”
Him, “seven hundred and fifty euros.”
Her, “Two months and not one day more.”
Outside, Dr. Coen has to contend with Momo:
Momo, “I’m not living with that old bag!”
Dr. Coen, “Momo, it’s either her or Social Services.”
Dr. Coen offers Madame Rosa seven hundred and fifty euros, and Momo joins her household as a boarder. At least, she accepts the “animal” and the “little brat” in her home. Madame Rosa tries to rehabilitate Momo by introducing him to the retail selling business world, to Hamil (Babak Karimi), a Muslim Algerian Arab. Momo is already in the employ of a drug dealer, and he peddles on the street. When Hamil confronted him one day about reality, he quits. At Madame Rosa’s home, her health is giving in to Alzheimer’s disease. She wanders frequently and hardly knows if she does.
One day, she walks straight into the basement of her house and enters a room. Momo follows her there, and when he made his presence known, she got offended at one point but quickly forgives the little nosy in her house. This is the only room that brings her quietness of mind and reflection. When one night she had strayed from her room, Momo traces her there. We come to note the room’s essence to her with old luggage is the bitter reminder of her family’s escape from Auschwitz, Germany. She shows Momo an old postcard she bought in the market. An old house planted and surrounded by blooming spring flowers, with a beautiful bright yellow glow. The place in the postcard reminds her of the one her family rented in Germany.
In a tear-jerking moment, Losif’s mother came eventually for her son. Before he leaves, he proudly brags to Momo, “I told you I have a mother, and she’ll one day come for me.” He beats Momo there. Momo’s mother would not come for him. Not in this world. She was killed when his father couldn’t let her quit prostitution. He stands over the window, tears dropping on his pale cheeks, sees Losif and his mother cross the street in a downpour. Madame Rosa’s delirium gets worse and worse, and Dr. Coen suggests she be moved to the hospital for better care.
One night, in the basement, she let Momo promise her that, “Whatever happens, I don’t want to go to the hospital. I am telling you this…I know you can keep your word.” When Momo says he promises, then she asks him to say it in Hebrew. “Harem,” Momo says. Momo, however, was disappointing to Madame Rosa, Hamil, and even Lola when he left the dining table and ran out. He, too, is disillusioned that Losif’s mother came and got him. Dr. Coen doesn’t quite know what he’ll do with Momo if Madame Rosa became incapable of taking care of the boy. Lola and Babu had gone for the weekend when the ambulance came and took Madame Rosa away.
Momo rushes to the hospital and sees Madame Rosa, and they reconcile over the plastic mimosa flower he brings her. Her eyes light up. Momo puts her in a wheelchair and escapes from the hospital with Madame Rosa as he had promised. He wheels her into the basement room, then rushes to her room upstairs and takes all her things to the basement. The police come looking for her, but she was nowhere. Not long after, sipping a little bit of water Momo gives her, she passes. Madame Rosa dies in Momo’s care alone.
This is a gripping story of love and cares for humanity for the sake of humankind. “The little shit.” As Madame Rosa would call Momo at one point, it turns out to be, “You’re a good boy. If you wish, you can come and live with me. We can be happy together.” It is a little wonder the lives of these two characters, Madame Rosa and Momo, one, a frail old holocaust survivor, strong, commanding, and a hard-headed, stubborn orphan. Soon, they grow into each other to the end, when Momo would barricade himself in the basement room sitting by her cold dead body.
Loren was 15 years old when she took part in a beauty pageant. She breaks into the Hollywood scene by winning awards at the Oscars for Best Actress in Vittorio De Sica’s Two Women in 1960. To this date, she has acted in over 70 films. I’m looking at The Life Ahead more as a tribute to Sophia Loren. Matter of fact, before she gave up her last breath, she advised us all: “It’s just when you give up hope… that good thing starts to happen. …It’s reassuring.” This story once won the Oscar for Madame Rosa in 1977. Its origin is from a book titled, The Life Before Us, published in 1975. It is now retitled, The Life Ahead with Edoardo Ponti directing. Some people might be wondering if the same story with a different name wins Oscar competition twice. If it does, The Life Ahead stands a chance because Sophia Loren and Ibrahim Gueye put their best into it.