Curzon Artificial Eye
Full disclosure – I haven’t seen Gloria, the 2013 Sebastián Lelio film on which Gloria Bell is based, but this, his second English language film (after Disobedience), and following the huge success of A Fantastic Woman, which took the Chilean filmmaker to Oscar glory in 2018, is pure beauty; a cinematic love story with roughed up edges, a feature I was utterly absorbed by from the opening frames.
Julianne Moore is the Gloria Bell of the title, a fifty-something divorcee who now spends her evenings on the dancefloors of Los Angeles, swept away from her humdrum loneliness amongst the beats of Earth, Wind and Fire, and Gloria Gaynor. She’s on her own, though has two grown-up children (played by Michael Cera and Caren Pistorius), but she’s seemingly far from unhappy – her divorce from her husband was ten years previous. Settling down is on her mind, it seems, and one evening Gloria meets John Turturro’s Arnold, a fellow divorcee, who is still going through the fallout of a separation, which he explains was just one year ago. His kids are still reliant on him, as is his ex-wife, and it’s clear that he’s struggling with the pressure. A shared interest in dancing bonds both Gloria and Arnold early on, and the two embark on a huge adventure together. They bond further with trips to Arnold’s work – he’s now a paintball instructor following a career in the Marines, and Gloria confidently introduces him to her own, slightly disjointed family.
Put simply, Gloria Bell is glorious, both the film and the character depicted by the ever-wondrous Julianne Moore. The film plays as a whirlwind rhapsody, an eloquent telling of a tale about modern love and all the crap that comes along with it when you have history. Moore’s performance evokes so many emotions as you watch her, the real-life struggles Gloria is going through very easy to empathise with. We identify with the issues the Turturro character is going through too, an uncomfortable dinner party with exes reminiscing over old times is particularly tough to watch as a viewer. Gloria, too, suffers the same turmoil, Arnold constantly fielding phone calls from his offspring at key moments in the relatively new couple’s time together.
I liked everything about this movie. The beats land perfectly from Lelio’s direction, the narrative working well as it is transferred – apparently almost shot-for-shot (there are some differences) – from the disco’s of Santiago to the bars and clubs of present-day Los Angeles. The cinematography from Natasha Braier (so good on Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon) is excellent, for example, the images of freeing, light-drenched dancefloors featuring a single Gloria contrasting heavily with the desaturated streets of Las Vegas during the final reel. Bolt-on a mesmerising score from frequent Lelio collaborator Matthew Herbert and you have every element to contribute to a near-perfect, utterly absorbing movie. I loved it. My only reservation would be as to whether Gloria Bell’s big, shining light would be dimmed had I seen Lelio’s original. Judging it on its own merit, however, Lelio’s latest absolutely blew me away.
Gloria Bell is released in cinemas on 6th June 2019.
