Gloria Bell – Always Moore

Divorced quinquagenarian whose children have fled. Gloria listens to headless disco in her car and regularly goes out to a club where single people of her age replay the Saturday Night Fever of their youth. They dance to the sound of « Ring My Bell » of Anita Ward (1979) or of « Gloria » of Umberto Tozzi in Laura Branigam’s version (1982). Hence the title : Gloria Bell. Her daughter, a yoga teacher, is going to marry a Scandinavian surfer, her son (Michael Cera) has his baby on his arms while his wife multiplies retreats in the desert… While Julianne Moore justly camped out this newlyweds in need of love.

Gloria Bell, is the new film of Sebastian Lelio, Chilian director of A Fantastic Woman (Oscar of best foreign film 2018) and of Disobedience (2018).

We found in Gloria Bell the slow pace and attention to detail that worked in her previous films. But A Fantastic Woman created a kind of suspens born from exoticism of the situation. That of a drag queen whose the mate dies and who is confronted with the bourgeois family of the latter. What do we know about the status of LGBT+ in Chile ? Where will the story tak­e us ? While Disobedience was a lesbian melodrama in the Orthodox Jewish side of London, just as exotic in our eyes. None of this in Gloria Bell, Americans between two ages are on the contrary the subject of many films and series of the All That Heaven Allows (1955) to Big Little Lies (2017), counting wide. When Gloria meets John Turturro, half credible as a former Marine who started a paint ball park, he takes her to Las Vegas. Why does this cultured woman agree to go away for the weekend in this temple of false pretense ? As the film drags on a little, we get rid of inconsistencies. Yet, despite her slowness and limitations, Gloria Bell is a beautiful portrait of a woman… His main flaw is that Sebastian Lelio seems not to be coming back from making a Hollywood movie with Julianne Moore. It’s going to be OK.