I think I saw Mark Kermode talking about this Italian film on The Film Review for BBC News, it certainly sounded like something good and the sort of film I would expect to gain attention during Awards Season. Basically, in the port city of Bari, Apulia, Italy, Madame Rosa (Sophia Loren) is a former prostitute and Jewish Holocaust survivor with a day-care business, providing a home in her apartment for children of other "working women". One day, Rosa is shaken after a young boy robs her on the street. This twelve-year-old orphaned Senegalese immigrant child, Momo (Ibrahima Gueye), is arrested. Dr. Cohen (Renato Carpentieri), the boy's foster father, who also happens to be Rosa's doctor, brings her stolen items back and makes the boy apologise. Cohen offers Rosa money to take the boy in and look after him for a couple of months, and she reluctantly agrees. It is revealed that Momo has been kicked out of school for stabbing a bully with a pencil. Momo has also made money from secretly selling drugs for a dealer in Bari. Rosa finds him a job working with kind Muslim shopkeeper Hamil (Babak Karimi). All the adults try to guide the boy in the right direction. Rosa's mentality starts to decline, but she is helped by her neighbour and friend, a prostitute named Lola (Abril Zamora), whose daughter Rosa looks after. At times she is vibrant and rational while at others she is unresponsive. Rosa and Momo develop a deep bond, after he becomes her only ward. He quits selling drugs. Rosa asks Momo to promise to keep her out of the hospital, and he agrees. But she is taken there following a particularly bad episode. Momo sneaks her out of the hospital at night and hides her in a basement room of her apartment building where she feels safe. It ends in tragedy when Lola finds Momo sobbing for Rosa after she dies. It ends with Rosa's funeral. Loren delivers a commanding and soulful performance as the woman with a troubled past who forms an unlikely friendship with the boy who robbed her, and Gueye is good as the young man. This is a somewhat standard story of an older woman and an immigrant child bonding, I will be honest and say that I dipped in and out a little, but it is a good tale about love and tolerance, a worthwhile drama. It was nominated the Oscar for Best Original Song for "Io Si (Seen)" written by Diane Warren and Laura Pausini (also nominated the Golden Globe), and it was nominated the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Foreign Language. Sophia Loren was number 24 on The 100 Greatest Sex Symbols, and she was number 21 on 100 Years, 100 Stars - Women. Good!
Review of The Life Ahead
