Goodness! "Gloria Bell." What happens? A woman in her late fifties meets a guy and goes on some dates, then ends up alone. And yet the movie feels revolutionary. Why?
-The sex. It's standard in a movie to ignore sex unless the participants are far, far from middle- or old-age. In "Gloria Bell," however, we watch Moore's character mid-coitus. We watch and watch. In Hollywood, it's standard to focus on the young woman, and to have her make some alluring, soft, moaning sounds. Nothing extravagant. But, in "Gloria Bell," Julianne Moore does not seem interested in giving you a pleasant, tasteful fantasy of pseudo-sex. Instead, she scrunches up her face and makes some loud, unusual noises. It's not as if you're in a Katy Perry video. It's as if you're watching something from actual life. The camera has dared to go somewhere that counts as "terra nova." Revolutionary!
-The solitude. We spend so much of our lives alone, or lonely; even in the company of others, we sometimes still feel alone. But do movies regularly capture this? We'll sometimes see a perky montage, where the heroine does several kinetic things with a smile on her face, and there's fun music, a strange soundtrack the heroine herself seems not to hear. Otherwise: Dialogue, dialogue! Full engagement between characters!
Not so in "Gloria Bell." We see Julianne Moore awkwardly singing alone in her car--over and over again. There are jarring register shifts; Moore goes from piano to forte without warning. The singing is terrible. Yes, Moore seems to say, I know that this is a part of your life. And now you're going to see it on camera. Moore often has a spacey, anxious look on your face, which can be at odds with the words she is singing. Brilliant. (And are her conversations fulfilling? Witness the scene where she tries to tell her son Michael Cera about "infant-oral-thrush," and her son stares at a phone screen, occasionally murmuring angry, confused comments about his missing wife. This is life!)
-The lack of learning. Often, in a Hollywood film, the heroine makes an error, and then, like a plucky Taylor Swift stand-in, she reflects on the bad experience, she writes in her journal, she gets meditative with some supportive friends. Then we watch the heroine triumph. She has learned from her mistake, and we see new, healthy behavior--and the trumpets sing. Not in "Gloria Bell." In this movie, a woman gets involved with a man, though there are red flags pretty early. The man abandons her in a shocking, cruel way (and we sort of understand his wishy-washy cruelty, given the smartness of the script, and given Turturro's magnificent performance). Does Gloria learn from her heartache? NO! She takes the guy back. She can't quite handle her anger--however--so, almost in spite of herself, she picks up the guy's phone and dumps it in a bowl of hot soup.
Surely that will prompt some learning? Nope. Turturro abandons her again! (How can you predict new behavior? By looking at past behavior.) Well, surely Gloria has learned to find some mature avenues for her anger at this point? Surely she won't destroy property yet again? NOPE! We see her, toward the climax, digging out Turturro's paint-ball gun and laying waste to his modest suburban home. In a DVF wrap-dress, Julianne Moore sprays thick red liquid all over her former lover. This might feel satisfying, for one to two minutes, but we can imagine the kind of emotional hangover it will produce--later--for Moore's character. (And indeed we follow Moore to a sullen place; she seems stricken while attending a friend's wedding. She seems estranged from herself. Who among us hasn't "been there"?)
Gloria doesn't really learn. She starts as a well-intentioned mess, and ends as a well-intentioned mess. She's a hoot. Gloria, c'est moi!
-The sex. It's standard in a movie to ignore sex unless the participants are far, far from middle- or old-age. In "Gloria Bell," however, we watch Moore's character mid-coitus. We watch and watch. In Hollywood, it's standard to focus on the young woman, and to have her make some alluring, soft, moaning sounds. Nothing extravagant. But, in "Gloria Bell," Julianne Moore does not seem interested in giving you a pleasant, tasteful fantasy of pseudo-sex. Instead, she scrunches up her face and makes some loud, unusual noises. It's not as if you're in a Katy Perry video. It's as if you're watching something from actual life. The camera has dared to go somewhere that counts as "terra nova." Revolutionary!
-The solitude. We spend so much of our lives alone, or lonely; even in the company of others, we sometimes still feel alone. But do movies regularly capture this? We'll sometimes see a perky montage, where the heroine does several kinetic things with a smile on her face, and there's fun music, a strange soundtrack the heroine herself seems not to hear. Otherwise: Dialogue, dialogue! Full engagement between characters!
Not so in "Gloria Bell." We see Julianne Moore awkwardly singing alone in her car--over and over again. There are jarring register shifts; Moore goes from piano to forte without warning. The singing is terrible. Yes, Moore seems to say, I know that this is a part of your life. And now you're going to see it on camera. Moore often has a spacey, anxious look on your face, which can be at odds with the words she is singing. Brilliant. (And are her conversations fulfilling? Witness the scene where she tries to tell her son Michael Cera about "infant-oral-thrush," and her son stares at a phone screen, occasionally murmuring angry, confused comments about his missing wife. This is life!)
-The lack of learning. Often, in a Hollywood film, the heroine makes an error, and then, like a plucky Taylor Swift stand-in, she reflects on the bad experience, she writes in her journal, she gets meditative with some supportive friends. Then we watch the heroine triumph. She has learned from her mistake, and we see new, healthy behavior--and the trumpets sing. Not in "Gloria Bell." In this movie, a woman gets involved with a man, though there are red flags pretty early. The man abandons her in a shocking, cruel way (and we sort of understand his wishy-washy cruelty, given the smartness of the script, and given Turturro's magnificent performance). Does Gloria learn from her heartache? NO! She takes the guy back. She can't quite handle her anger--however--so, almost in spite of herself, she picks up the guy's phone and dumps it in a bowl of hot soup.
Surely that will prompt some learning? Nope. Turturro abandons her again! (How can you predict new behavior? By looking at past behavior.) Well, surely Gloria has learned to find some mature avenues for her anger at this point? Surely she won't destroy property yet again? NOPE! We see her, toward the climax, digging out Turturro's paint-ball gun and laying waste to his modest suburban home. In a DVF wrap-dress, Julianne Moore sprays thick red liquid all over her former lover. This might feel satisfying, for one to two minutes, but we can imagine the kind of emotional hangover it will produce--later--for Moore's character. (And indeed we follow Moore to a sullen place; she seems stricken while attending a friend's wedding. She seems estranged from herself. Who among us hasn't "been there"?)
Gloria doesn't really learn. She starts as a well-intentioned mess, and ends as a well-intentioned mess. She's a hoot. Gloria, c'est moi!
Comments
Post a Comment