Review of The Life Ahead

An old ill ex prostitute and holocaust survivor after several dramatic situations bond with a young orphan immigrant whose present is poied between loneliness and delinquency. Doesn't it seems too much? Yes and it really is. Too much for one movie and definitely too much for Edoardo Ponti to handle. His direction struggles to deal with this amount of themes and it eventually shows his inexperience. Every character is artificial, every dialog is contrived and every scenes is forced, pushed harder and harder trying, almost desperately, to move the audience, to manipulate their emotions. Yes manipulate, Ponti doesn't try to move with his ability to direct and shoot but by dramatic situations stacked one above the other and hastily connected, by a rigid editing, exploiting the reality behind them. Even the acting, even Sophia Loren's (and this really hurts to say), are mediocre.