by Eric Blume
Variety recently announced that Netflix has acquired rights to an Italian remake of the 1977 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film, Madame Rosa. Now titled The Life Ahead, it stars Sophia Loren in the Simone Signoret role, who this time "forges a bond with a 12-year-old Senegalese immigrant boy named Momo."
There's a lot to unpack here. The original Madame Rosa movie is notoriously one of the worst winners of that Oscar category, and for good reason: the movie is sentimental garbage. This French film won over, among others, Luis Bunuel's challenging The Obscure Object of Desire and Ettore Scola's A Special Day, starring Marcello Mastroianni and...Sophia Loren...
This film will mark Loren's first appearance in a movie since her brief role in 2009's musical Nine. Loren, now 85, is of course a legend of the cinema.
Loren seemed born for the cinema. Her mesmerizing beauty and overwhelming sensuality were matched by her intelligence and grace, and when she's onscreen, you're not looking at anything else. She's the definition of special, a true one-of-a-kind actress who made Italian cinema sizzle through the 1950s and 60s.
The Life Ahead (2020)
The Life Ahead is directed by Loren's son, Edoardi Ponto. Will he avoid the sentimentality and obviousness of the 1977 French film? These types of elderly/young bonding movies are pretty tricky to pull off, the artistic height of course being Walter Salles' 1998 film Central Station, with its remarkable Oscar-nominated performance from Fernanda Montenegro, which managed to steer clear of the traps and was breathtaking.
But won't it be great to see Loren onscreen again, in such a big role? Are you excited about her return? What's your favorite Sophia performance?