She’s not exactly looking for love, but she’s open to it. And while she’s not quite lonely, no one in her life seems to have much use for her. She spends most of her time alone, but as she sees it, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. For Gloria Bell, life isn’t remarkable, or unremarkable, and her ordinariness, and how she fills the quiet spaces most movies intentionally avoid—is one of many pleasures in Sebastian Lelio’s immensely satisfying new character study.
As played by a luminescent Julianne Moore in the Oscar-winning Chilean filmmaker’s Gloria Bell—the American “cover version” of his revered, 2015 Santiago-set original Gloria—the fifty-something, divorced woman in every scene of this movie is a most novel creation, particularly in American film: an everyday person looking for connection in a world where no one makes her a priority.
We first meet Gloria Bell at her local hangout—a Los Angeles watering hole masquerading as a 70s discotheque serving as her home away a few nights a week. Dancing is her passion in life and while she might enjoy a little flirtation, she is largely on her own—and leaves on her own. No one in the nightclub pays her much attention, which is surprising because—come on—it’s Julianne Moore. And when someone does engage her, it’s to inquire about whether she’s “had work” done. This, to Gloria, is a high compliment.
Her rote day job as an insurance agent is far from fulfilling and she may see the writing on the wall when a friend, played by the great German actress Barbara Sukowa, is unceremoniously let go. Her harried son (Michael Cera) is raising is toddler alone yet isn’t very receptive to help. And her pregnant daughter (Caren Pistorius), a yoga instructor whose fiancé is a professional “big wave surfer,” is moving to Europe. Her best friend (Rita Wilson) is married and consumed with her own daughter’s upcoming nuptials.
All of this leaves Gloria with a healthy amount of spare time, and since this is Los Angeles, she spends much of it in her car, singing, sometimes off-key, to Olivia Newton-John and Air Supply. Dance like nobody’s watching? More like sing as if no one is listening.
At home, Gloria’s routines consist of shooing away a stray, hairless cat (which mysteriously continues to infiltrate her home) while trying to block out the midnight hour arguments of a volatile upstairs neighbor.
Lelio, with a quiet, observant eye, gives us the banal daily moments of teeth brushing, medication taking and face washing—things we all do every day yet never see onscreen—lending the film an air of ritual authenticity.
Things change for Gloria when a night out at the club reveals smitten new suitor Arnold (John Turturro), a newly divorced (he’s got one year single to Gloria’s twelve) ex-Marine who owns a paintball course and has recently undergone gastric bypass and, in their first of several frank, intimate scenes, must remove a girdle before sex.
Their relationship provides much of Gloria Bell’s narrative tension, and the pairing of two characters who may want the same things but are simply not at the same life places to achieve them together couldn’t be more believable. Reductive viewers will surely jump to simplify Arnold’s actions as those of a selfish cad. But the more astute will recognize a well-intentioned sincerity at odds with a defining identity he’s not yet ready to shed.
Take, for example, an awkwardly uncomfortable extended sequence at son Cera’s birthday gathering, where Lelio accomplishes a perfectly calibrated, and perfectly believable, reunion of exes between Gloria and her former husband, well-played by Brad Garrett. As the two ignore their significant others (including a wry Jeanne Tripplehorn as wife number 2) in a tightly framed two-shot, the sequence takes on a thorny, messy realism leading to a bruised ego and impulsive act that will frame a behavioral pattern informing the rest of the film.
Neurotically tied to the whims of his former wife and adult daughters, Arnold’s inability to seal the deal with Gloria would, in a lesser movie, lead to histrionics or co-dependency on the part of the woman. Here, Moore’s Gloria simply goes on with her life, a bit disappointed but better for it. During a key Las Vegas interlude, Gloria throws down the gauntlet and invites Arnold on a trip to Spain. But can he let go of his adult daughters and ex-wife long enough to go?
Yet despite his shortcomings, we never suspect Arnold’s affection for Gloria, limited as he may be. In a beautifully acted scene, Turturro reads a poem with such feeling as to show you why Gloria thinks he’s worth the effort—and why she puts up with his shortcomings. Then a phone rings, the romantic spell is broken, and explanation is offered. Both characters just go on together in the moment. It’s a lovely thing.
In a key change from the Chilean version, Holland Taylor shows up as Gloria’s mother in two critical scenes—first, explaining practical financial matters (in dialogue we’ve not heard in another film) and later as a sort of savior to her daughter, allowing us to see Gloria herself as a child in need of support.
And there’s still much more to this richly observed study of a woman doing okay in life and looking for a little bit more, dipping into Los Angeles’ (the most disconnected of cities and social groups) aging, singles communities in search of something, whether attending absurd, group laugh therapy sessions or randomly introducing herself to strangers at the bar. What she realizes, by the time Laura Branigan’s anthemic title track frames the picture’s conclusion, is that getting more may mean something different than she thought.
Moore, radiant as ever and daringly vulnerable both physically and emotionally, delivers a more emotional and on-her-sleeve portrait than Chilean actress Paulina Garcia, who created the role and whose very solid work suggested less emotional stakes and more of a come-what-may outlook, a performance that netted her a deserved Best Actress prize at the Berlin Film Festival.
If there’s any justice later this Oscar season, Moore will be similarly enshrined.
3 1/2 stars.
