I’ve had the song ‘Gloria‘ running around in my head for weeks now, since I saw Gloria Bell in fact. Yes, this tells me that I should write more timely reviews, but at least the soundtrack of the final scenes has been playing relentlessly in my mind instead. And it really is a glorious, uplifting song that perfectly encapsulates the energy of Sebastián Lelio’s latest feature.

With Gloria Bell, Lelio is remaking his own film (hey, if Howard Hawks et al can do it, then why not). Originally released as Gloria in 2013, with Paulina Garciá in the lead role and set in Santiago, it was the fourth feature from the Chilean director. A Fantastic Woman (2017), his fifth feature, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2018 Oscars. Meanwhile, Gloria Bell is not Lelio’s English language debut, that particular first went to 2017’s Disobedience with Rachel McAdams and Rachel Weisz.

Despite this impressive CV, I’m sorry to say that this is the first of Lelio’s films I’ve watched, although Disobedience and A Fantastic Woman intrigued me and were my first awareness of his work. This means that I haven’t watched 2013’s Gloria, but it’s now securely on my to-watch list. I’ve heard Gloria Bell described as a scene-for-scene remake, so I’m especially curious to see if there are tonal differences, and how Paulina Garciá played the sympathetic titular role before Julianne Moore’s later efforts.

Gloria Bell, played beautifully by Moore, is a middle-aged woman, divorced for over a decade, and living alone. She has two grown-up children, and enjoys the company of her friends. She works a job with an insurance company, that she seems to like, and at which she seems to be pretty good. Motherhood offers Gloria one of the foundational aspects of her identity – albeit one which reflects deeper temperament. She takes a sensitive, slightly hovering, but always supportive approach to parenting her adult son and daughter. They open up to their mother, and from her there is cautious advice, but always wholesale acceptance of their choices and feelings. She provides emotional bolster for soon-to-be unemployed colleagues. She makes life better, and easier, for those around her. The often disproportionate immaterial labour burden borne by women is a central plank of Gloria’s character. Even with her ex-husband and his new wife, she is warm, inclusive, and kind.

As well as being a generally very admirable person, Gloria is also a fan of disco dancing, and big disco tunes. It is this music that provides the soundtrack for her inner world – her joy as she drives to work. When she’s going out, she dresses up immaculately and always with her glasses on, drinks her cocktails, mingles, and dances. Niteclubs like those Gloria frequents throughout the film don’t exist where I live. If they did I’d know, and I’d be there… a lot. These clubs are frequented by other middle-aged revellers, partaking in a civilised parade of well-heeled socialising and hopeful encounters. Gloria’s dramatic arc is presaged by an unsatisfying romantic relationship (with John Turturro), whom she meets at one of her haunts.

Films that put middle-aged women front and centre as protagonists are exceedingly rare. They tend to cluster in the independent film arena, rarely escaping to the omniplex. Because they carry such weight of representation, they tend to be scrutinised for meaningful comment. With Gloria Bell, I relished the full immersion in a largely unremarkable life. Is she happy? Is she sad? As I watched, I wondered whether I was watching the initial mood shifts of a breakdown… or should I read this as ‘living well’. Her emotional breakthrough/breakdown, on foot of romantic failure, seems to suggest that Gloria Bell strikes a note of devil-may-care triumph. Perhaps the key point is that, in our largely unremarkable lives (with the ‘our’ representing a familiar Western and middle-class context), our measures of success and failure are fleeting, and evident only in many small victories or losses.

Gloria Bell is an engrossing portrait of a fiercely sympathetic character. Julianne Moore plays a woman for whom everyone is rooting, and it’s a pleasure to follow her on one of life’s many dramas.

4/5