Lonely Gloria Meets Weird Arnold — Then What?

Julianne Moore is radiant as Gloria, a complex, passive, passionate and lonely divorced mother of two grown children with an unfulfilling job in an insurance agency and a penchant for dancing in Los Angeles clubs. The film is a remake of a 2013 Spanish language film made by Sebastian Lelio written by Lelio and Gonzalo Maza. The new film also directed by Lelio attempts to Americanize the story.

Gloria is a puzzle; her still beautiful face is hidden by large plain glasses; she is lonely but brave enough to venture out alone to strange dance clubs for older middle-aged singles. Her still lithe body is showcased in bizarrely frumpy but revealing ‘70s style polyester wrap dresses. The movie unsettles. The pounding bass of an ever-present disco soundtrack provides background music for the hundreds of closeups on her stunning 59-year-old face as she drives — singing along flatly, but with purpose, to vaguely familiar oldie songs about woman power and love power.  

One night, while she is dancing with a handsome gray-haired stranger in a club, her eyes lock with an intense looking John Turturro who plays Arnold, a recently divorced man looking for love. Early in the film we know, this creepy, brooding guy sitting at the bar who can’t stop looking at her will be some kind of trouble. Yet, she pulls us along with her lonely, hopeful perplexing love for this unlikely guy who tells her he is madly in love with her. In spite of his earnest desire to “have a new life” with her — as it turns out Arnold, (who, in preparation for his new life, has recently lost a hundred pounds after gastric bypass surgery) has an incessantly calling, needy ex-wife and two pathetic, overweight 30ish daughters who can’t seem to manage without him. His ever buzzing cellphone becomes a third wheel in the couple’s courtship – in one of the film’s few light moments, Gloria throws the phone in his soup after a call from the wife and daughters ruins what should have been a romantic moment. 

Gloria seems to have lived in a vacuum  — it is hard to make out her life. Her job is so dull it defies belief, her relationships with her two children are distant but caring, she has a friend at work (in a tiny role for the talented German actress Barbara Sukowa) who inexplicably gets fired. Her mother looks upper middle class, but Gloria is of no discernable class. Her circle of friends appear artistic and bohemian  but she has no interest in that world. She lives alone except for a profoundly ugly hairless stray cat who won’t leave her alone. Her apartment is bland but not shabby, the landlord’s son lives upstairs and is only present through his endless moaning and shouting.  

Gloria has few activities, but they all tend towards the cliché­ —group laugh therapy and yoga. Arnold, the owner of a paintball/adventure park, brings her there to bungee jump and shoot paintball guns. At first, we think he is freeing her from the chains of her lonely existence, but we are being set up for the final triumphant revenge scene which makes the entire strange, sad, brooding film, worth the tedious wait. 

“Gloria Bell” is playing widely.