Even though I have hardly ever talked about cinema in my columns here (and perhaps I am expected to talk more about geopolitics, especially at the moment), on the eve of International Women’s Rights Day, I would like to recommend a film that I consider to be an absolute masterpiece: “There’s still tomorrow”, directed by Italian comedian, journalist and actress Paola Cortellesi, who also plays the lead role. Released in October 2023 in Italy, where it was a critical and popular triumph, to the point that school children were sent en masse to see it in theaters.
This comedy-drama, which subsequently enjoyed only critical acclaim in France, had everything going against it: a first film, directed by an almost unknown person, without a famous actor, shot in black and white, set in Rome in 1946, with an apparently banal plot: the possible marriage of the eldest daughter of a very modest couple to the son of a neighboring family, who are barely less poor.
And yet, I insist: this film is an absolute masterpiece, in its craftsmanship, its direction, its screenplay, the acting, and because it makes us think deeply about one of the most important and highly topical issues of our time: violence against women.
Rarely has this subject been treated with such force and such persuasive power. Rarely has the cultural and political depth of what it implies been seen in all walks of life, in all countries.
We know how important it is: at least hundreds of thousands of women die every year in the world of male violence; they are murdered everywhere, in all civilizations, in all countries, even the most advanced such as France or Italy, by their spouses, their ex-spouses, their brothers, their cousins, their work colleagues, or strangers. Many more are injured, bruised in body and soul. And hundreds of millions of them, if not billions, are deprived of the means to learn, to live, to work, to express themselves. In many countries, and in many cultures, in countless families, even in the most developed countries, some are treated as slaves from early childhood. In many places, they are married at the age of six. They are not allowed to go to school. They are not allowed to dress as they wish. All of humanity suffers from these monstrous crimes. All of humanity loses what billions of talents could express.
And yet, at this very moment, in the United States and elsewhere, their struggle is being discredited, neglected and mocked. The return of “masculinity” is being praised; and some, like Mark Zuckerberg, who is not the worst of them, even go so far as to demand: “We need more masculine energy”.
If we are not careful, if we do not remember the depth of this evil, how long it has been around, how it permeates all societies, we risk going backwards, after some fragile advances in recent years.
This is what this uncompromising film does, placing violence against women in the context of the values of Italian society, which is neither worse nor better than any other. It does so with the weapons of great transalpine cinema (which, however, hardly mentions it at all, despite a few notable films). And here we find the images, the dramatic depth, the intensity of the dialogues, the rhythm of the masterpieces of the immediate post-war period in Italy, of which my favorites are Vittorio de Sica’s Bicycle Thieves and Miracle in Milan.
This film also deals with another major issue, which is not unrelated to the other: the fundamental struggle of women to obtain their political rights, and in particular the right to vote, which Italian women, like French women, did not obtain until after the end of the Second World War. And of which hundreds of millions of women are still deprived, de facto, in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, in a large part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in many other countries.
There are many other magnificent dimensions to this film, such as the improbable friendship between an Italian mother living in poverty and a black American, a soldier in the occupying army, both representing minorities oppressed by white men.
I could also talk about the music, the cinematography, the lighting, the dialogues, the actors’ performances, the choice of extras, the perspective chosen at every moment. And, even more, and perhaps above all, the way in which the director takes the spectator by the hand, does not let go from the first image, and leads them along, making them believe, until the very last minute, that the plot is something that it is not. So much so that as soon as the film ends, you want to watch it again to understand how you could have missed what was really at stake.
Watch this movie. See how it relates to you. Try to understand why, like me, you let yourself be fooled. And talk about it to those around you; it’s a small gesture that each of us can make to defend democracy, which is so threatened today.