2023-12-27 11:52:29
by Paolo Mereghetti
The great success of There’s Still Tomorrow can be explained through the personal affirmation of the protagonist which passes through a collective choice of all the women and not an individual one
The objectively out-of-scale success of There’s Still Tomorrow by Paola Cortellesi (gross of 31 million and 481 thousand euros as of 25 December, the equivalent of 4 million and 639 thousand admissions) asks those who don’t want to limit themselves to the role of spectator some effort of understanding and explanation.
There is no doubt that the film has some characteristics that distinguish it from the mass of typical national products and we have reiterated its originality and in some way its uniqueness.
Meanwhile, the choice of black and white which to a spectator accustomed to color seems to immediately send a signal of attention (much more than the refinement of using a Neorealist format, i.e. square, in the very first scenes, and then moving on to a panoramic one). To this aesthetic choice must be added a formal one, namely the use of a narrative register that moves away from the realistic key and transforms moments of family violence into strange metaphorical ballets. I say strange because the pas de deux of Cortellesi and Mastandrea reveal a certain awkwardness, some (deliberate) lack of fluidity which at first may seem amateurish but which then turns out to be very functional for what will turn out to be the film’s great ace up the sleeve , its politely pedagogical value.
Just as the soundtrack also pushes in the same didactic direction with the use of openly significant songs (Aprite le windows, Perdoniamoci or M’innamoro really) used in an ironic or antiphrastic sense and openly chronologically out of phase, so much so that they do not seem like a soundtrack but almost a voice-over that accompanies the film. And he comments on it.
Naturally the film is not without shortcomings or, for some, defects, for example in the poor psychological consistency of Delia’s character. How far we are from the all-round portraits of Magnani, Lollobrigida, Loren who knew how to win the public’s sympathy in pink neorealist comedies. Those women, all in some way heroines of female pride, not to mention feminist (think of The Honorable Angelina, Bread, Love and Fantasy, It’s a Too Bad She’s a Scoundrel, just to name a few titles) imposed themselves for their character decided, to want to be the master of her own life and to refuse exactly what Delia does: passively suffer her role as a woman and wife. Rather than telling some story of rebellion or emancipation, There’s Still Tomorrow seems to tell, at least until the last twist, a story of submission and humiliation, even devoid of those underlinings of injustice or anger that elsewhere light up the audience empathy (as in Ken Loach’s films). So?
Well, with hindsight I think that these defects can explain the fuse that was lit transforming the film into a success which then the avalanche effect (it was the film you had to see) took it to the top of the box office.
Delia is not like the many heroines of our cinema – I am thinking of the Honorable Angelina but also of the housewife in A Particular Day, capable of betraying at least once – who take her destiny into her own hands and turn it upside down; not like those who want to shout out their identity to everyone; not even like someone who chooses love over duty. No, Delia tells us that the beginning of her affirmation as a woman comes through a collective choice (the one she makes at the end of the film among many other women) and not an individual one.
But this is not yet the point, or rather not the only one: unlike many more emotionally engaging films, There’s Still Tomorrow offers those in the theater a small, simple, life lesson, one that doesn’t want to offend and that doesn’t weigh on you. sharing too much: without presumption, without giving the impression that she knows things, as if she were telling the public that some change is possible, that something can all be done together (the presence of the other women stops the husband’s anger in front of the polls). This is why I was talking about politely pedagogical value: this film is not about today (at least directly) and therefore does not question our choices but gives us a small lesson in civility. How nice to hear this from a nice and not at all presumptuous actress.
In an increasingly moralistic country, increasingly infected by the need to judge others, Paola Cortellesi’s film speaks without shouting, says things that we cannot help but share and in the end it makes us feel better and better precisely because we have shared with her a (reassuring) civics lesson. Which is also right to applaud.
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December 27, 2023 (changed December 27, 2023 | 09:10)
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