There’s Still Tomorrow  

There’s Still Tomorrow is a film about the ever-elusive promise of the future, taunting us with its perpetual deferral. Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow I will change my life. It’s a familiar refrain – one most people know better than its fulfilment. 

For Delia, played by Paola Cortellesi (who also directed and co-wrote the film), in 1946 post-war Italy, that promise feels impossibly out of reach.

Her todays and tomorrows, like our film, begin in a dance of harsh and unsettling normalcy. “Good morning,” Delia says to her husband, Ivano (Valerio Mastandrea). He hits her. Just another typical morning.

She swings her legs over the bed and stomps on a rat. The kids are screaming, almost as much as her father-in-law, and the dance continues. 

Welcome to Delia’s world - a society grappling with the trauma of war, where American GIs patrol and men dominate the social order.

Delia is a hero we know - our mother, our sister, our friend. A woman for whom dreams have given way to survival, and life is defined by a cruel husband and the weight of familial responsibility. 

The film’s title initially feels like a promise of the day Delia might escape her domestic servitude. But this is, to a degree, a sleight of hand. Amid the struggles of this society, something else stirs. A familiar refrain rises among the women: “I’ll have my say.”

And what of the letter Delia clutches? It’s a question you’ll have to wait until the film’s conclusion to uncover.

For although this film is about escape from abuse, intergenerational trauma, and the hopes of motherhood - to give our children a better life - it is also a mystery. The true meaning of the refrain, the mysterious letter and Delia’s quiet acts of rebellion unfold like a puzzle, revealed piece by hopeful piece.

Still, in some ways this is a film that’s challenging to watch. It portrays a life many know or fear and deserves a trigger warning for its depictions of domestic violence.

However, There’s Still Tomorrow manages the difficult task of rising above the shocking, elevated by a creator who knows that sorrow and hope go hand in hand, made more powerful, more striking, in their contrast.

A rare film that shows us there are still new things to say – and new ways to say them. Its black-and-white style draws from mid-century neorealistic filmmakers, yet the film at every turn feels fresh, even playful.

Cortellesi deftly subverts narrative expectations, breaching and transcending strict realism with choreographed musical sequences set to a surprising yet never out of place soundtrack.

While such meticulous vision means the creator’s hand is strongly felt, the film’s artifice does nothing to undermine audience immersion or water down hard-hitting themes. Instead, this approach renders moments more accessible and poignant, than if played outright. 

We all know the unfulfilled promise of tomorrow. But Cortellesi’s film dares to imagine the seemingly impossible - the arrival of that wonderful, atypical day when stagnation gives way to change. Shining, golden and overdue. Sisyphus pushes his boulder to the top of the hill and Godot arrives. You change your life. 

Already one of the most successful Italian films of all time, There’s Still Tomorrow is a work of rare wit and enduring significance, deserving of every accolade - and, most of all, your time. 

Ruby Lowenstein is a writer, critic, and producer with a BA (Hons) in Cinema and an MA in Arts and Cultural Management from the University of Melbourne. Since 2017, she has worked in the arts and media sector, driven by her passion for cinema, art, and literature. •