Hitting all the right spots in the most unlikely of ways is Gloria, a film centered on a divorcée nearing her 60s setting out to live with renewed ideals. As an unapologetic voyeur to Gloria’s life, we watch her participate from the margins of the mainstream in her oversized rose colored (framed) glasses. In a refreshing account absent of the usual melodrama, the titular character redirects her life to try and better dictate what happiness is after a certain stage. This runs the gamut of the building and fading of a romance, stolen weed, clubbing, and broken family time.
With Director Sebastián Lelio’s growing reputation for constructing complicated narratives, the Chilean filmmaker attributes the success of his latest to it carrying out “an insistent point of view of Gloria by never abandoning her and having [the] spectator to see from her perspective.”
“It’s centered on Gloria — the camera never leaves her and there’s not a single frame where her body isn’t present, so in a way she is the filter through which the world is seen.”
“That’s this film,” says Lelio.
Displaying natural comic sensibility and candor, Lelio directs a no-frills portrayal of a woman’s internal transformation equipped with dry humor, imperfect naked bodies, and an all at once endearing and creeptastic hairless cat. A robust Paulina García gives a dazzling, multifaceted performance, as evidenced by her Silver Bear award for Best Actress at the Berlin Film Festival.
“I think in order to be universal you have to be radically local,” says Lelio of the ease with which the viewer is able to relate to Gloria, disregarding geography and generation. “What’s underneath is a very human subject that has to do with finding love [and] meaning, the value of relationships, and the challenges of any life.”
With Gloria, both the film and titular character suggest the universal sensibility of evolving introspection and figuring out one’s place in the world at any stage in life. A perfect kind of love letter to any self interested in taking the scenic routes.
Who Should See It: If you every now and then drift into the red zone of questioning your levels of happiness and satisfaction (often with wry humor).
Who Shouldn’t See It: If your cinematic tastes are dominated by youth and millennial culture.
Opens this Friday, January 24.
Review by Sandy Chung. Follow her on Twitter @sndychng.