It took a special role to lure Sophia Loren out of a nearly 10-year acting hiatus: Madame Rosa, a Holocaust survivor who cares for numerous children of prostitutes. The character was first dreamed up by French author Romain Gary in his classic novel The Life Before Us.
“She is one of the great characters of world literature,” the 86-year-old actor wrote Vanity Fair in an email. “She is fragile, strong, irreverent, in many ways she reminds me of my mother.”
The project was even sweeter for Loren because it was directed and cowritten by her son Edoardo Ponti—who reimagined the Parisian-set story in Puglia, Italy, to honor Loren’s Neopolitan roots.
In The Life Ahead, teased below in the film’s first trailer, Loren’s Madame Rosa encounters a street-savvy 12-year-old Senegalese orphan Momo (Ibrahima Gueye) in Bari, Puglia. After Momo steals from Rosa, a heartwarming friendship ensues between the unexpected kindred spirits.
Loren, via a translator, called the novel a “heartbreaking story of love and friendship between two people that separates religion, race, age, culture.” Gary’s characters, she said, “are two opposite sides of the same coin as they are both survivors.”
The actor believes this unlikely alliance will prove relevant to audiences internationally when The Life Ahead premieres on Netflix November 13. “We live in such a polarized world,” said Loren. “This story speaks to the importance of being seen and heard, that if only we learn to embrace and accept our differences, the connections that we can make are boundless.”
The film marks Loren’s third collaboration with Ponti, following 2002’s Between Strangers and the 2014 short film Human Voice. Though mother and son have a natural shorthand that makes communication easy on set, Loren explained that their collaboration can be challenging.
“He gives me strength and security and he won’t give up until I give him my very best,” said Loren. “He doesn’t settle for anything less than that because he knows what I am capable of. It is a true gift working with a person who knows you as well as you know yourself…he knows exactly what buttons to push to get something out of me that I didn’t know I had. And also we have fun, no matter how tough the day is. We always find time to have a laugh, which is so important.”
The role marks a sort of full-circle acting experience for Loren—who costars alongside Gueye, a newcomer approximately the same age Loren was when she began acting. Ponti said that his mother recognized familiar qualities in Gueye. “At 15, my mother was already very prepared, very eager to do the job right, very attentive, very responsible,” he said. “And Ibrahima had that similar sense of duty to prepare, to make sure that everything was right, to hang on every word of the director, to make sure that he was hitting his mark. He took it very seriously, and I think that's what she admired in him.”
Said Loren, “Ibrahima is such an amazing boy. He is a hard worker, courageous, and so talented. This is his first film and I was amazed at how prepared and focused he was and how he was able to bring so much joy and emotion to the scenes. He is a great scene partner and a wonderful person. I think he will have a great future in this profession if he chooses to follow it.”
Even though Loren has been acting for about seven decades, the Oscar winner said that she is still discovering new things about herself.
“The search for authenticity, the search to create moments that are as truthful as possible is never over, not even at 86,” said Loren. “No matter your age, there is always a layer of yourself that you can uncover. In this film, it was embracing all the different energies that these new and amazing actors were sending my way. It was so wonderful.”
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