Tutta la vita davanti

Preamble for you foreign viewers: this movie is about the so called "permatemps"; that's temporary workers who effectively do the job of a permanent worker, but can be fired anytime and have no benefits at all. In the last 5-6 years in Italy, temporary job laws were introduced and had a devastating effect on society, especially on younger generations.

Finally a movie with heart about temporary workers, very well written and directed. You will be taken through the odyssey of Marta, a young graduate in philosophy who cannot find any job related to her studies, so to keep herself alive, she has to take a temporary job as a telephone-marketer.

While in the process of descending this inferno, she will get in touch with a wide spectrum of persons and situations, that will keep you interested in the story.

The writer/director does a very good job in building the story, you will really care for all the characters, even the two villains, who by the end of the movie show their human side.

My only remark to the script is when Marta engages in a totally gratuitous sex act that is very clichè, and the fact that the story does not really tackle with all the problems that a temporary worker has to face in Italy, mainly the inability to get any mortgage to buy a house, or the mandatory periods of time when the worker is left home without pay and then hired again later through a different mediating agency, which is the standard workaround to avoid the rather feeble restrictions imposed by the law.

Overall, this is a great movie that I recommend, it is an universal story about the de-humanization of people, that every viewer in the western world will feel connected to. Yet it still manages to be funny at times and rather moving.