Gloria Bell (Review)
Gloria Bell Shows Us that Growing Up is Hard at Any Age.
Society tends to ignore women of a certain age, which is why Gloria Bell is such an important movie. The film follows a woman in her 50’s who is trying to figure out what to do with her life now that her children don’t need her and she’s been divorced for nearly a decade. Alas, there’s no easy answer to that question and the titular Gloria is faced trying to find herself again at an age where she’s supposed to have it all figured out. The end result is an intimate look at the uncertainty of life that is heartfelt, awkward, but never despressing.
Julianne Moore bears it all in her performance as Gloria. She’s an older woman who lives a pretty comfortable life, but is tormented by lonliness. Her children all have lives of their own and are pushing for independence, while not actively pushing her away, and she’s been divorced for a number of years. She seems to have lost her purpose and direction in life, which is why she spends most nights looking for romance in local night clubs. Make no mistake, she’s not looking for sex in her late night escapades. Instead, she’s just hoping to make a genuine connection with someone. Unfortunately, it’s not easy in this day and age to build those relationships, which is a hard lesson for Gloria to learn.
Director Sebastián Lelio takes a slice of life approach to Gloria Bell. He tells her tale through a serie of scenes that almost feel like vignettes. While they all flow together they’re all relatively short and self contained. However, the cast is so incredibly talented that they’re able to speak volumes in the breif moments before the film cuts tot he next scene. The entire film almost feels like a movie trailer in itself, but that’s what makes it feel so genuine. There’s no grand plan to it all, instead it flows just as life does. Gloria navigates from moment to moment dealing with everything the universe throws at her and moving on to the next one. Because of this there really isn’t much of an act structure to the movie. It doesn’t have a traditional beginning, middle, and end. Instead, it simply observes everything that happens to her over the course of a few weeks in her life.
Because Gloria Bell is a slice of life film, it’s more of a character study. Moore turns in one of the best performances of her career as Gloria. Like all of us, Gloria just wants to feel needed and loved. Moore taps into that basic human need and explores what it’s like to not feel like you truly belong. While her family don’t ignore her completely, it’s clear that they’re absorbed in their own lives and Gloria struggles to feel like she’s still important to them. This alientation leads to her looking for love in all the wrong places, which is how she ends up in the arms of John Turturro’s character, Arnold. Like Gloria, he’s looking for a way not to feel so lonely. Though his situation is completely different from hers as his family is completely dependent on him emotionaly and financially. Together, they try to fill the voids in their lives with a whirlwind romance.
So often we believe that life gets easier as we get older, but Gloria Bell dashes that concept against the wall. The truth is that no one really has any idea what
Gloria Bell is a magnificently crafted look into the life of an intricate and empowering character. Moore’s performance
