Written by Andreas Babiolakis

We are playing catch up by reviewing films that are a part of the current awards season.

I want to be able to say a lot more about Edoardo Ponti’s The Life Ahead, but all I can remember is how neutral the entire affair is. Like take every film about an older generation and the current age, as well as varying classes, shove it into a program for an AI to create its own version of this kind of story, and you’ll get The Life Ahead almost verbatim. I want to like it more, considering how lovingly Ponti films and represents his mother Sophia Loren, who is a legend of cinema (and clearly still as fantastic as ever, even to the point of almost securing another Oscar nomination at the age of 86). I just found enough of the film to be so average. It’s best elements are enough to bring it up to a “pretty good” recommendation, but it’s otherwise as basic as you can get, and sometimes that’s even more difficult than an outright terrible film.

The contrasting relationship between Rosa and Momo is really nice, especially because they are both people who have been spat out by society and have had to face discrimination (Rosa is a Holocaust survivor, and Momo was an orphan brought to Italy from Senegal). They are toxic towards one another (likely because Momo robbed Rosa the first time they ever meet, so that’s likely what would happen afterwards), but they also understand one another. It’s typical for a film like this, but it’s still nice, especially seeing an acting veteran give everything she has in her latest performance, well over half a century into her career.

The relationship between Rosa and Momo is obviously the centrepiece of the film.

Otherwise, that’s pretty much all I have to say about The Life Ahead. There’s some fun, some emotional stuff (especially towards the end), but otherwise The Life Ahead is as standard as you can get. What is meant to feel like a big door opening for a child and closing for someone who has seen it all just feels like a simple moment instead; it’s as if we’re not experiencing the scope of time, but rather this whole miraculous event whilst paused. By the time it finished, I just felt as normal as I was going into this film, and that isn’t the greatest result to me. The Life Ahead doesn’t really do anything wrong, but I also feel like it doesn’t do much, outside of its acting and some sequences, well. It’s like the film understood the assignment and did exactly what it was asked, but with little flair or ambition.

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.