Availability: Opened in the United States March 7 (in Italy in 2023); still showing in major US cities. No streaming information is available at this time. Expected to stream on Disney+ or Hulu by the end of 2025; see JustWatch here for future streaming options.
Who Controls the Lipstick?
The children stand and leave the room, Grandpa bangs his cane on the floor from the bed of his closed bedroom, Delia backs away from her seething husband Ivano. Everyone knows the wife and mother of three is about to get a brutal beating. It’s hard to take your eyes off Paola Cortellesi, a famous and beloved 50-year-old Italian comic actress (we’d never heard of) channeling Anna Magnani at her stoic best, in a sympathetic portrayal of the long-suffering Delia.
Paula Cortellesi is riveting as the Anna Magnani-like, long-suffering Delia.
This unsubtle tale of domestic violence and female powerlessness unspools in 1946 Italy, importantly filmed in the iconic, black-and-white neorealism of the post-war era. By setting the story in a period when women had less power and independence than today, Cortellesi, also director and co-writer, could make Delia’s desperate plight and Ivano’s (Valerio Mastandrea) repulsive reactions more plausible than if the time frame were contemporary. Even so, “C’è Ancora Domani” struck a chord with Italian audiences, breaking box office records and launching a national discussion of domestic violence.
“C’è Ancora Domani” struck a chord with Italian audiences, breaking box office records and launching a national discussion of domestic violence.
Women are the heart of the melodrama (neorealism thrives on melodrama). Delia and Ivano’s teenage daughter Marcella (Romana Maggiora Vergano) is the only one to confront her mother: “You’re a doormat. You’re nothing.” And Delia finds comfort and support from her female friends, especially the vegetable seller Marisa (Emanuela Fanelli), who talks back to her lazy husband and offers Delia a prohibited cigarette. The moments of female solidarity—Delia smoking with Marisa, “servants” hanging laundry together on the roof, the Greek chorus of neighbors in the courtyard—are essential to their sense of self.
Female solidarity is engagingly pictured in the scene of Delia (Paula Cortellesi, right) and her friend Marissa (Emanuela Fanelli) smoking the prohibited cigarette.
If the women are good, the men are all bad. Not just Ivano, but the couple’s two young boys, learning early to do whatever they want; Grandpa (Giorgio Colangeli), who scolds Ivano not about beating Delia, but for the way he does it; and sooner rather than later, Marcella’s boyfriend Giulio (Francesco Centorame). Numerous chase scenes are straight from melodrama too: Grandpa’s sometime caretaker Alvaro (Raffaele Vannoli) rushes to the church to announce the old man’s death as mass drags on, potentially thwarting Delia’s escape; and a final scene in which Delia is running, followed by her husband, followed by her daughter. Portions of the script are intentionally comic (caretaker Alvaro delivers some of the film’s funniest lines), lessening the burden of watching Delia’s humiliation, a technique similar to the musical numbers in “Emilia Pérez” or the madcap action in “Anora.” These recent award-winners also are grounded in female agency.
Portions of the script are intentionally comic, lessening the burden of watching Delia’s humiliation.
“There’s Still Tomorrow” manages to walk the line between predictable melodrama and tension that’s honestly come by. A luncheon between the families of Delia and Ivano and of Marcella’s fiancé can seem silly and yet gripping. A black American MP (Yonv Joseph) performs the script’s deus-ex-machina, and it works. An unexpected Hollywood-esque ending will satisfy some, and disappoint others.
The lunch between the engaged couple's families is part farce, part tragedy. Front, picking up a ruined dessert, Delia (Cortellesi). Seated at the head of the table at right Ivano (Valerio Mastandrea), her abusive husband, and to his left, Grandpa (Giorgio Colangeli).
First-time director Cortellesi’s decision to set her narrative within Italy’s neorealist movement is an audacious one. She’s treading on sacred territory for Italians, even going so far as to use settings Italians would recognize: the three-faucet nasone fountain in central Rome, the overhead shot of the apartment echoing the displaced persons in postwar Cinecittà. By disrupting the narrative with some comedy and moments of magical realism—the beatings become a kind of dance and Delia’s injuries miraculously disappear—Cortellesi can have both: an evocation of the best of Italian cinema and a contemporary feel.
A gesture says it all. Marcella’s boyfriend wipes away her lipstick, smearing it on her face: “You wear lipstick only for me,” says the until-now-perfect Giulio. Delia, overhearing these words from her sewing machine in the adjacent room, knows she must act. And that wiping off of lipstick will recur in the final frames, only then signaling the possibility of a change in the power balance between men and women.
She says: I see Italians as re-living bad men pushing around women, which makes me wonder if there’s more of it going on than we think. It’s central as well to Elena Ferrante’s best-selling “Neapolitan Quartet” novels (the first of which—“My Brilliant Friend” [“L’amica geniale”] was named the New York Times best book of the 21st century), the basis for the recent TV series.
He says: Creatively conceived and gripping throughout. The bait-and-switch ending, now common in film, was troubling. One can’t help but wonder what’s in store for Delia.
Date: 2023 (released in the US in 2025)
Director: Paola Cortellesi, Valerio Mastandrea, Romana Maggiora Vergano, Emanuela Fanelli, Giorgio Colangeli, Francesco Centorame, Raffaele Vannoli, Yonv Joseph
Starring: Paola Cortellesi
Country: Italy
Language: Italian, subtitled in English
Runtime: 118 minutes
Other Awards: 23 wins (including 6 Davids—the "Italian Oscars") and 20 other nominations
Comments