The Life Ahead
Summary:
After stealing from an old lady, a 12-year-old boy named Momo is placed into the care of the very same woman he stole from. Having been taken care of by a doctor for a fair amount of his life and with the doctor wanting a break, Momo is sent to Madame Rosa who has taken care of many children. Little does Momo, who has had a hard life, know that Rosa has had a difficult life due to her being a Holocaust survivor and we see the two begin to bond, though at their first meeting they do not like one another.
Characters:
The Life Ahead features many different characters of varying importance. There is Dr. Coen, who is the primary caretaker of Momo before he is handed off to Madame Rosa. There are Iosif and Babu, who are children under Madame Rosa’s care. And there is also Lola, Babu’s mother. The important characters of this movie are Momo and Madame Rosa. Momo is an orphaned child, who turns towards drug dealing on the street to find family. Although Momo is able to find legal ways of making money and develops personal bonds with those around him, Momo feels lost, and finds solace in his illegal job. Madame Rosa, on the other hand, is an Auschwitz survivor. She uses her previous experiences to define her strength in her character. As she grows older, the scars from her past leave their marks.
Nathanyal: 6.5/10
The Life Ahead was an okay movie. From the surface, the premise of the movie sounds promising. An at-risk child is put under the wing of an Auschwitz survivor. From there, the two will develop an unlikely bond that shapes each character for the better. This is what the movie was supposed to be. Instead, the movie lacked any proper direction. The bond between the two leads never really developed and was never really shown throughout the movie. From a viewing perspective, I was able to tell Momo was changing and was bonding with Madame Rosa, but how or why, these questions were never really addressed. Besides the bond development having no screen time, the backstories of these characters were never developed. Besides knowing that Momo is an orphan, and that Madame Rosa survived the Holocaust, this is all the information we were given. As a result, the viewer isn’t able to really connect with these characters on screen. Another issue was the dubbing and subbing of this movie. The native language for this movie was not English, and as a result, the movie was both dubbed and subbed. The main issue with this was that the dubbing and subbing never lined up together. Without these two areas lining up, the serious tone of the movie is taken away and is replaced by the comedic timing of poor dubbing and subbing.
All in all, this movie was just alright. It was an interesting concept, but nothing really happened.
Sebastian: 5.8/10
For you long time readers of the website this movie reminded me of The Nest, a film that we reviewed earlier this year, not in terms of story but in terms of how I was not engaged throughout the film. For starters I should mention that this movie is not originally in English. The film both is dubbed and uses subtitles which I know turns off some viewers from watching movies like this. In my opinion the best part of the film is the acting, not exactly from the dubbing, but the actual Italian actors in the film who even with a language barrier their facial expressions and body language was easily conveyed through the screen. Both Momo and Madame Rosa have decent enough chemistry throughout the film and I feel the actors are really trying. The premise itself is quite interesting with a story of a Holocaust survivor taking in an orphan being a good set up for a drama/uplifting movie that could have made for a great film.
Now on the negative side I found this film extremely boring. Even looking past, the bad sinking up of the dubbing and the subtitles with the subtitles saying different things than what we hear coming out of the actors’ mouth, the movie had a difficulty keeping me focused on the story. It feels as if the movie moves at a turtle’s pace with maybe three major events throughout with the rest of the movie feeling like pointless meandering that doesn’t have a huge impact on the story. While in the positives I said the actors did well I meant it I just feel they weren’t given a lot to work with as their backstories aren’t delved into in the slightest with one mention of Rosa being a Holocaust survivor, which was a little weird considering it was in the description of the film and Momo’s backstory being told second hand with very little detail making me not feel connected to the characters. Also, I had no idea when Momo and Rosa liked each other because one moment they were getting along and the next Momo was swearing at Rosa.
All in all I did not enjoy, admire or appreciate this film and I don’t recommend it. It didn’t really make me feel anything but if you don’t believe me, check it out yourself and hopefully you get something out of it unlike me.
Austin: 5.7/10
This is an okay movie, but it is missing a lot. It’s only a hour and a half, but this is a movie that I feel should have, and could have, been longer. The character development is very minimal, and the dialogue is not good. The plot moves fairly smoothly, but I found that it lacked detail and depth. It is pretty hard to judge the acting and the dialogue because of the fact that this movie was in Italian, with an English dub. The dub was not good, and the subtitles Netflix uses are awful. There might have been 10 lines that were totally right, for the entire movie. The character development of our main character, Momo, was fantastic. He grew so much from the very beginning, and it was nice to see the different personality traits that came from that growth. Outside of him, the rest of our characters basically stay the same. This is a coming-of-age movie, so there is not a whole lot that happens. It is still a fairly enjoyable movie, just not the most captivating or fast-paced.
I really would have liked to see more backstory for almost all the characters, and more details put into the plot. It felt like we knew all the characters’ names, but that was almost the extent of our knowledge. It was hard to connect with the characters on an emotional level, because outside of Moms, we learn near nothing about the rest of our characters.
This movie had the potential, based purely on the summary, to be a really intriguing and captivating movie. It could have been an emotional, heart-throb, but instead it was pretty boring. This one is on Netflix, but I think there is a lot of better movies for you to check out.
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Ponti, Edoardo, director. The Life Ahead. 13 Nov. 2020, www.netflix.com.
