Young Critics Lab

24 décembre 2024

IL RESTE ENCORE DEMAIN (C'È ANCORA DOMANI) - Review by Nicola Bardi

Italian actress Paola Cortellesi, special guest at the 16th edition of the Les Arcs Film Festival, presented to the festival audience her critically acclaimed debut film as a director, which became a cultural phenomenon in Italy last year.

Following the unexpected yet refreshing critical and commercial success of C'è ancora domani -grossing nearly 50 million euros and earning major accolades at the David di Donatello Awards and the International Rome Film Fest- Paola Cortellesi was invited as a special guest to this year’s Les Arcs Film Festival. Before the film's screening on 15 December at the Centre Bernard Taillefer in Arc 1800, she was honoured with the Femme de Cinéma Sisley - Les Arcs Award by Philippe d'Ornano, Fabienne Silvestre, and Pierre-Emmanuel Fleurantin, celebrating her contribution as a female director in European independent cinema.

In her directorial debut, Cortellesi delivers a poignant tale of womanhood and resilience, co-writing the script with Furio Andreotti and Giulia Calenda and starring opposite Valerio Mastandrea as Delia and Ivano. For her movie, she draws inspiration from Neorealism heritage in its set design and lively supporting characters. Shot in a digital black-and-white with a straightforward editing, every direction element avoids a baroque style to solely focus, as its main core, on the performances and characters.

The film opens with a morning wish and a sudden slap from Delia’s husband, Ivano, establishing with striking clarity its central theme. Set against the backdrop of mid-1940s post-war Italy, the narrative unfolds under the fitting notes of traditional Italian pop songs, such as Fiorella Bini's Aprite le finestre at the very start of the opening. In her daily life, Delia struggles to balance household chores, care for her three children, and nurse her incapacitated and handsy father-in-law (Giorgio Colangeli). To make ends meet, she takes on various underpaid jobs -repairing clothes, working for wealthy families, and fixing umbrellas- while enduring constant physical abuse from her husband for even the smallest mistakes or misplaced words. This endless cycle of poverty and domestic violence underscores the grim reality for women during that era.

Delia, a woman surrounded by men who view her as worthless, bears everything in silence, much like her extradiegetic audience. Only through her outspoken daughter, Marcella (Romana Maggiora Vergano), who is soon to be married, does Delia begin to awaken from her psychological numbness and realize she wants to take action with her own hands: her husband is beyond redemption, the support from friends, like the witty grocer Marisa (Emanuela Fanelli) is limited and an old infatuation with the car mechanic Nino (Vinicio Marchioni) -along with the prospect of a different, yet ultimately unfeasible, life away from Rome- won’t bring her any meaningful change.

Cortellesi’s decision to infuse humour -even in the face of violence or death like Ottorino’s- and to incorporate elements of magical realism, such as choreographing as dances the beatings Delia receives. This magical element stands in stark opposition to the lifelike approach of a poor family’s life in Rome and that might push back some audiences that expected a more traditional approach but it’s one of the core elements that is going to be carved in everyone’s memory. Violent scenes become a bleak dance that symbolize how a daily occurrence it is and how a brute and drunk husband is socially accepted or justified -Delia is not the only one in her neighbourhood to be beaten-. Using a dance-like choreography matched with pop music, consciously underplays in contrast the seriousness and tragedy of those moments. Even if beaten, at the eyes of the patriarchal 40s society Delia was wrong and those beating weren’t a bad but a deserved thing.

Delia’s ultimate act of rebellion and self-actualisation -though fleeting- substitutes a hinted clichéd romantic finale with a rightful ode to those women who resisted everything -from lack of rights to war and systemic violence- and, despite that, had a profound impact on their country’s future during the 1946 Italian institutional referendum, which established a democratic republic. As Paola Cortellesi has often mentioned in interviews, she drew inspiration from the stories of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers who silently shaped and built modern Italy. Despite their immediate personal lives remaining unchanged as they returned to cycles of beatings and abuse, their contributions left an indelible mark in society. For this reason, her solid debut film is destined to be remembered for years to come.

C'è ancora domani was produced by Wildside and Vision Distribution in collaboration with Netflix and Sky. The film premiered in Italian cinemas on 26 October 2023, and in France on 13 March 2024, distributed by Universal Pictures International.

Nicola Bardi