Movie Review: Gloria Bell

Gloria Bell *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Sebastián Lelio.

Written by: Alice Johnson Boher and Sebastián Lelio and Gonzalo Maza.

Starring: Julianne Moore (Gloria), John Turturro (Arnold), Caren Pistorius (Anne), Michael Cera (Peter), Brad Garrett (Dustin), Holland Taylor (Hillary), Rita Wilson (Vicky), Jeanne Tripplehorn (Fiona), Sean Astin (Jeremy), Barbara Sukowa (Melinda).

 

I’ve seen the musical Next to Normal on stage twice – once in New York, near the end of the Broadway run, when the original lead – Alice Ripley – had already left, and once in Toronto when it went on tour a couple years later, and Ripley had returned to the role for the tour. It’s a great musical – and the lead character in it, played by Ripley, is a manic depressive. The first person I saw play the role focused more on the depressive side of the role – making the lead a little sadder, more passive – while Ripley ripped into the manic aspect of the role – it’s a much wilder performance and musical with her in the lead. Both were brilliant – but they were different.

 

I thought of this while watching Gloria Bell because in essence, that is what is going on here. This is an American remake of a Chilean film from not that long ago – 2013 to be exact – with Paulina Garcia in the lead role. It was the international breakthrough for director Sebastian Lelio – who would go onto win an Oscar for A Fantastic Woman. Leilo returns to the director’s chair for this remake – and while they throw in a few lines to spell out we are in America now (unnecessary) and her love interest is made her own age instead of older – but other than that, this is essentially the same film as Leilo made just 5 years ago. The main difference is that instead of Paulina Garcia, he now has Julianne Moore in the lead. And she approaches the lead role in a slightly different way than Garcia did - in many ways, I think she has better defined aspects of the characters that Garcia (deliberately) left more ambiguous. Much like the two productions of Next to Normal I saw, I don’t really know which one is better – they are in many ways, the same thing. But in some ways, there is enough difference to make them their own unique thing.

 

For those who have seen neither version of Leilo’s film, they focus on a middle aged woman named Gloria (Moore). She has been divorced for 12 years, has two grown children out living their own lives, works a boring job at an insurance company (that she is very good at), has a few close friends, and not much else. She spends some nights at a dance club for older adults – sometimes she makes eyes with the other men, sometimes it goes nowhere. It is here where she meets Arnold (John Turturro) – divorced only a year, who has a different sort of relationship with his family. They don’t seem to want to let him go – and they are on the phone with him a lot. He says he wants to break free and live his own life – but he always seems to be sucked back in – mainly because, in some way, he wants to be sucked back in.

 

Moore is one of the best actresses of her generation, and there is seemingly nothing that she cannot pull off. When you look at the range of her work from Short Cuts to Boogie Nights to Magnolia to The Hours to Far From Heaven to The Kids Are all Right to Still Alice and a whole lot more, she is not an actress you catch in a bad performance often. This is one of her better recent roles (certainly better than the aforementioned Still Alice, for which she finally won an Oscar – which was a great performance in a snooze of a film). It is a film built by small moments and gestures – because in many ways that is Gloria’s life (isn’t it all of our lives, really?). She has no one to confide in – not really. Her kids are living their lives, with their own problems. Her best friend (Rita Wilson) is still married, and while supportive, doesn’t quite understand Gloria. Her co-worker (Barbara Sukowa) is worried about her job. Her mother (Holland Taylor) has her own issues. And Arnold is someone she is just getting to know – feeling each other out. Gloria is outwardly happy – and perhaps most of the time, she is inwardly happy as well. But there is a creeping loneliness to her – seen only briefly in great moments of acting by Moore that really drive the performance and the movie. The last scene in the film – set to one of the cheesy pop songs Gloria loves so much (fittingly, Gloria by Laura Branigan) is such an amazing moment of acting by Moore that it made me like the film as a whole much more than I thought I did.

 

And it also must be said that John Turturro is almost equally as great as Arnold. The original film cast an older man (who, frankly, I have mostly forgotten in the years since) – but Arnold is Gloria’s own age. Turturro brings interesting nuance to a character, who frankly, is more than a little bit of a cowardly asshole. And yet, Turturro makes you like him – at first anyway – and even in the end, you feel sorrier for him than anger with him – no matter what he has done.

 

As for Leilo, I’m not sure what he really had to gain by making this film again. He does a good job here – great with the actors, and as for the rest, he basically did the same thing as last time. As with the original and A Fantastic Woman and Disobedience, Leilo is building a solid resume of interesting film that are interested in a female point-of-view. I’m not sure he’s made a great film yet – but he certainly hasn’t made a bad one either. And even if this feels like a retread for him, it’s a good one.