Our Discordant and Enchanting Emotional Life

Escaping work demands one evening during the pandemic, I searched for “mind-abandonment” and turned to a movie on Netflix. It was the new flick The Life Ahead (2020), starring Sophia Loren, directed by her son Eduardo Ponti, and adapted from Romain Gary's La vie devant soi (written as Émile Ajar, 1975). This experience demonstrated to me how we can never fully abandon our psychoanalytic propensities; they bubble up and pervade our minds. As I watched, frissons of excitement erupted as theoretical ideas; thoughts of transference; repetition compulsion; qualities of Erlebnis (emotional experience) and its complement, non-verbal communication; and attachment security coursed through my mind. I will engage with these issues later in this paper.

Sophia Loren, that luscious, sexy, exuberant actress, had not made a film for many years. Now much older, she was waiting for the right scenario to challenge her. The Life Ahead is a story about significant trauma and loss. As a dramatic, spectacular thespian she transforms a familiar plot with creative intensity into a heart-wrenching saga. She is Madame Rosa, acting in the role of an aging survivor of Auschwitz, who was subject to painful, horrendous medical experimentations, which left her seriously traumatized. As she ages, during the film, there is additional mental and physical deterioration. She frequently is found dissociated, with loss of consciousness, and unaware of her circumstances. She is lost in her interior world of great threat, anxiety, and fear. When she feels this danger rising within her, she retreats to a basement room in which she seeks comfort and safety. She is a formidable actress. Her face and body often communicate her stress as well as her tender caring.

Momo (played by Ibrahima Gueye), a young Senegalese boy, has been brought to her by the now old, yet kindly, psychologically minded physician who can no longer care for him. Momo lost his mother at six years of age. She no longer wanted to engage in pro