Review of 'The Life Ahead'

Slightly uneven but moving film about a Senegalese orphan refugee in the southern Italian town of Bari, who's taken in by former prostitute Rosa (played by Sophia Loren), and the relationship between them, and between the boy and other people in his social world - the drug dealer he works for, the other kids that Rosa looks after and their prostitute mothers. It manages to be not predictable in what might have been a moralizing tale...the drug dealer isn't a cartoon villain and the world he inhabits is full of proper humans, not evil predators. 

It's based on a book by Romain Gary (and apparently this is not the first film that's been made, and there was also a made-for-TV production and a stage musical). I'm not sure why it was important that the Rosa character was Jewish and a Holocaust survivor - is this an attempt to give some sort of gravitas to a subject that already has it in barrow-loads, or is there some subtle message about refugees now and then? I wasn't sure...maybe that's a good thing, because it might have been heavily messaged.

Watched on Netflix via smartphone and Chromecast.