Who'd have thunk that Sophia Loren would suddenly turn up, 11 years after her last feature appearance, leading a Netflix drama about a former prostitute every bit as wizened as she is by now? Or that, despite the warning bells that start ringing right after a one-line precis, i.e. she reluctantly takes in an orphaned 12-year-old Senegalese urchin, the end result isn't sentimental claptrap?
The key in The Life Ahead lies in the performances, and the director's willingness to use them to their best advantage: Loren is every bit as majestic and fiery in old age as she ever was, and Ibrahima Gueye, the boy, is a revelation. He starts out a little shit, railing out against all and sundry, and is still dealing drugs happily and being truculent well into the story, not magically transforming into some angel. It's a hard job for any novice actor to perform, but Gueye retains our sympathy without having to cute down unrealistically. Which means that, against so much of the more cloying tendencies of Italian cinema, what you get is fully-rounded characters who somehow still connect, and you believe it when they do.
7/10
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