Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
In seaside Italy, a Holocaust survivor with a daycare business takes in a 12-year-old street kid who recently robbed her.
The Life Ahead is elevated almost entirely by Sophia Loren's towering performance in her return to cinema, delivering a deeply felt portrayal of Madame Rosa that earned widespread acclaim. The story itself, a remake of the 1977 French film and based on Romain Gary's novel, follows a fairly predictable emotional arc of an unlikely bond forming between a hardened elderly woman and a troubled boy. The seaside Italian setting is warmly rendered but not cinematically distinctive. Novelty suffers considerably from being a remake of a celebrated original, with few fresh angles introduced. The ending is emotionally effective if somewhat foreseeable, landing with quiet dignity rather than surprise.