L ifestyles /C ulture
Sophia Loren Makes Triumphant Return in
Netflix’s ‘The Life Ahead’
ARTS SOPHIE PANZER | JE STAFF
ACTOR SOPHIA LOREN
broke a 10-year absence from
the screen with her starring
role in Netflix’s new drama
“The Life Ahead.”
The film is the second
adaptation of Romain Gary’s
1975 novel “The Life Before Us,”
and was directed by Loren’s
son, Edoardo Ponti. It tells the
story of a friendship between
an elderly Holocaust survivor
and a Senegalese orphan she
takes into her home.

The 86-year-old Loren
is vibrant as Madame Rosa, a
former prostitute who survived
Auschwitz and now grapples
with her failing health. She
takes care of other sex workers’
children, including the son of
her friend Lola, played by the
charming Abril Zamora. Child
actor Ibrahima Gueye plays
Momo, the drug-dealing 12-year-
old who robs Madame Rosa at
the beginning of the film. She
takes him in reluctantly at the
request of Renato Carpentieri’s
grandfatherly Dr. Coen.

Loren portrays Madame
Rosa with grit and vulnera-
bility. After suffering incredible
hardship, the character is still
capable of great compassion,
which she bestows on her
charges in the form of tough
love and sincere affection.

Perhaps the best example of
this is her decision to put Momo
in contact with Babak Karimi’s
Hamil, a widower who owns
a shop in their neighborhood.

She asks him to give Momo
work in the shop a few times
a week, a move which initially
seems like an attempt to get the
boy out of her hair.

However, it proves to be a
calculated move, as Hamil is
a Muslim man of faith who
encourages Momo to explore
his heritage. He asks him to
18 NOVEMBER 19, 2020
help him repair a rug depicting
a lion, which he tells Momo is a
powerful symbol in the Quran.

Madame Rosa, who survived
the Nazi’s attempt to destroy
her heritage by force, does not
intend to let Momo lose his
heritage through neglect.

When memories of her past
threaten to overwhelm her,
Madame Rosa retreats to the
basement of her apartment,
where she listens to music and
looks at photographs from her
life before the war. She has
survived everything the outside
world could throw at her, but
soon begins to strain under
the burden of her own mental
decline. She stares blankly into
space while Momo and Iosif try
to get her attention, hallucinates
about past horrors and wanders
away from her friends when she
loses touch with reality. When
she realizes the end is near, she
asks Momo to promise not to let
her die in a hospital, for fear of
“experiments” by doctors.

Momo does not understand
Madame Rosa’s past, having
never heard of the Holocaust
(he is confused by the numbers
of her arm and refers to
Auschwitz as “House witch”),
nor does he understand the
cause of her strange behavior.

He does, however, under-
stand that something horrible
happened to her, and that she
puts her trust in him.

The relationship between
the caretaker and her troubled
charge is one of several moving,
well-developed connections in
the film. Iosif Diego Pirvu’s
Iosif, a boy whose mother
left him in Madame Rosa’s
care, and Momo begin their
relationship as bitter enemies
after Momo barges into Iosif’s
room and plops on the bed
with his shoes on.

They eventually bond over
the absence of both their
mothers and their shared
concerns over the deterioration
Sophia Loren co-stars with Ibrahima Gueye in Netflix’s “The Life Ahead.”
Courtesy of Netflix.

There’s nothing subtle about this film, which is not necessarily a bad
quality in a classic tearjerker.

of Madame Rosa’s health, which
they watch with the confusion
of children whose lives have
demanded maturity beyond
their years. Soon, Momo is
helping Iosif with his studies
and sleeping next to him when
he misses his mother, even as
he tells him that she is never
coming back.

When Iosif’s mother returns,
Momo lashes out, consumed
by his own jealousy and grief.

Iosif attempts to comfort him,
and Momo rejects him, leading
to a bitter goodbye. The two
boys, played with incredible
emotional acuity by Gueye and
Pirvu, could have had a film all
to themselves.

The friendship between
Madame Rosa and Lola is also
a pleasure to watch. Although
there is little information about
how they met or what they have
been through together, audiences
JEWISH EXPONENT
can sense the history between
them and the love they have
for each other. Lola’s storyline
incorporates her identity as a
transgender woman without
fetishizing it, with nods to how
her wife left her to raise their
son alone and her anxiety about
visiting her father, who previ-
ously rejected her.

There’s nothing subtle about
this film, which is not neces-
sarily a bad quality in a classic
tearjerker. However, there
are moments when it all just
feels a bit too much: Momo’s
narration, which contains
a lot of flowery similes and
metaphors about the nature
of life and loss, would have
been better incorporated into
dialogue or left out entirely.

The phone given to Momo by
his drug dealer boss goes off in
Madame Rosa’s presence with
the predictability of Chekhov’s
gun. A scene featuring Italian
police separating migrant
parents from their children
during a raid is meant to allude
to Madame Rosa’s past and
Momo’s immigrant parents,
but it feels too rushed.

Nevertheless, Loren’s regal
performance and Gueye’s
youthful intensity make this
film worth watching. Netflix
has provided dubs in several
languages, but it is best to
watch with subtitles in the
original Italian, since the
dialogue feels stiff and insin-
cere in English. There is also
something delightful about
Dr. Coen reminding Madame
Rosa that Momo is only a
“bambino” and Iosif describing
his caretaker’s basement as her
“Batcaverna,” or Batcave. l
spanzer@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0729
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



L ifestyles /C ulture
Comedian Cory Kahaney Tackles Marriage, Family
and Aging in Katz JCC Performance
ARTS SOPHIE PANZER | JE STAFF
STAND-UP COMEDY is
a tough business in the era
of pandemic shutdowns and
limits on live performances.

That hasn’t prevented Jewish
comedians like Cory Kahaney
from taking to the stage
virtually. On Nov. 14, Kahaney
performed an evening set for
the 31st Katz JCC Bank of
America Festival of Arts, Books
and Culture. The festival, which
is based in Cherry Hill, New
Jersey, runs from Nov. 8 to
Nov. 19 and features authors,
speakers and performers from
around the country. Festival
Director Shonnie Lebovitz said
turnout has been high due to the
audience’s increasing comfort
with technology. So far, the
record for most devices tuned
in to a festival event is 193.

Kahaney is based in New
York and has performed
frequently in Philadelphia.

She was a finalist on NBC’s
“Last Comic Standing” and
appeared on “The Late Show
with Stephen Colbert,” “The
Late Late Show with Craig
Ferguson” and the 2016 season
of “America’s Got Talent.”
She has stand-up specials on
Comedy Central and HBO
and runs the monthly Ruthless
Comedy Hour on her website
(the title references the death of
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg).

“It’s very feminist, it’s
very liberal and it’s basically
Jewish-mom humor,” she said
in a separate interview.

During her festival perfor-
mance, Kahaney
joked about her two marriages, her
relationship with her children,
her body, online shopping and
more. She read a fake review
she left on Amazon for a
$15 hat her husband became
obsessed with and talked about
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Cory Kahaney
Photo by Sue Barr
It’s basically Jewish-mom humor.”
CORY KANANEY
the time she spent an hour
making up promo codes to try
to get a discount.

“I just typed in ‘Up yours!’
and I got 15% off,” she said.

She advised one audience
member to go to Trader Joe’s
if she ever felt like she wasn’t
being heard in her marriage.

“I go to that cash register
at Trader Joe’s and the woman
will look at me with so much
empathy,” she said. “She’ll say,
‘Hi, did you find everything
you were looking for?’ And I
suddenly feel vulnerable and say,
‘I never got unconditional love
from my mother.’ And she’ll say,
‘Oh, did you look in frozen?’”
She also joked about the
pressure she was under to marry
a Jewish man after her sister came
out as a lesbian to her conserva-
tive parents: “My mother was
hysterical. She said, ‘We’ll never
dance at her wedding!’ And my
father was like, ‘Shut up, we just
saved 50 grand.’”
Other highlights included
her mother’s apocalyptic texting
style, her husband’s inability
to throw anything away, the
high price of private college and
Manhattan preschools, and the
age of her genitals.

“What I have is a classic.

Some people call it a collector’s
item,” she said to uproarious
laughter. The show was filmed on
the platform StreamYard,
which allowed some audience
members to appear on screen
with Kahaney. She took advan-
tage of the opportunity to
connect with the crowd, asking
questions and riffing on their
lives during several bits.

Kahaney said making the
transition to virtual shows
was relatively easy because she
focuses more on joke writing
than on physical comedy, and
crowd work has also translated
pretty smoothly.

“I’ll be in the middle of a
joke that’s a little bit racy and I’ll
go, ‘You know what I’m talking
about, Myrna!’” she said. “I
don’t offend anybody’s decor or
JEWISH EXPONENT
whatever, I’m more looking for
opportunities to connect.”
Hecklers haven’t been
daunted by the virtual format,
either. Kahaney said she
usually listens to what they
have to say and only cuts them
off if they interrupt too much.

“Now I’m in an area of
material where they want to
contribute, or they disagree,”
she said.

She believes it’s possible to
make fun of the pandemic,
and often incorporates COVID
jokes that tackle masks, anxiety
and loneliness.

“We can make fun of stuff
like, you know, we pretend to
be more obsessed with COVID
so that we can get the elevator
all to ourselves,” she said. “Or,
have you ever been so desperate
to find a mask that you needed
to go into the store to pick up
one thing that you used one
you found on the sidewalk?”
Lebovitz said Kahaney’s
performance provided a form
of entertainment that has been
particularly difficult to access
this year.

“We always love to do
something that is fun or funny,
and this year it’s as important
as ever to do that,” she said. “So
we were looking for someone
who would be a nice fit for our
community. We are thrilled
that Cory is willing to do this,
we know this is a tough time
for comedians right now and
we are truly honored.” l
spanzer@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0729
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