The film opens with a whirlwind of images: philosophy undergraduate student, Marta (Isabella Ragonese), finishes her degree with the highest accolades, expects to be showered with offers from research institutions, only to find rejection in academia.
She realizes that her classmates, less idealistic, have taken the lowly road to gold. After four years of quiet reflection and essay writing, they’ve taken jobs as copy writers for gossip mags, Big Brother script writers and marketers.
What can Marta do? She accepts the fact that she’s unlikely to progress in academia, so she takes a job at a promotional call center, selling a rather complicated, expensive appliance to meekly acquiescing housewives.
Through Marta’s eyes, we see the horrors of temporary work – there’s no stability, no guarantee. When her fellow employees don’t make their quotas, they’re escorted out by security, crying. The head manager, played by the popular Sabrina Ferilli, who watches over the girls with an auspicious eye, seems to live a life of lonely sadness and delusion.
Even the owner of the company, Claudio, lives in secluded misery, separated from his wife, estranged from his kids, and begging for loans to be able to purchase the next shipment.
It’s the chase for money and status that send these characters into this world, selling a nearly useless appliance to people that don’t need it. Marta finds that she’s very good at the job, though she has trouble buying into the feel-good, positive energy requirements of the company.
“Her Whole Life Ahead” brings the Italian comedy at full speed… it’s an outrageous film, full of whizzing lights and shiny cars, but instead of sitting on physical comedy, or sleazy innuendo, the movie draws interesting conclusions with a fair eye.
Yes, the company is a miserable place to work, but when the local union leader stirs up some trouble, Marta sees how he uses it for his own prestige, and how the publicity makes the lives of the girls in the call center even harder.
What path, then, does “Her Whole Life Ahead” recommend? If not the union, and not the corporation, where should Marta go?
There’s no answer to this question, but in the final scene, when a frail old lady, serving Marta, her roommate Sonia and Sonia’s daughter, Lara, a crispy roast chicken asks Lara what she wants to be, the little girl sweetly responds ‘a philosopher’. The audience laughs, naturally, but the suggestion is that Marta’s influence on this little girl was supreme above all, and makes up for any disappointment that she might feel.
A film of wonderful, oddball Italian comedy, strewn with contemplation and a critical eye at the lives of young adults, ready to live in a world that provides them with money and work, but no guidance on what to do with it.
I say: An absolute smash hit, “Her Whole Life Ahead” has been extended to several more sessions at the Palace Academy Twin. Go see it before it closes!
See it for: I can only assume that the director is a lecherous man, having cast around one hundred sexy Italian women in the movie, parading them in front of us in low-cut tops and hip-hugging pants.
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