Gloria

With its slapdash style, reasonably light (but not lightening) tone and vivid acting, Gloria is a simple and straightforward yet unusually long-resonating film. Gloria’s search for someone who would love her and live with her to the fullest instead of slowly growing old doesn’t go in unexpected directions and doesn’t try to shock us (the amusing femme fatale interlude comes across as subversive, especially due to the fact that, contrary to custom, a woman indulges in the game instead of a man). Secondary meanings that deepen the seemingly one-dimensional narrative emerge from the protagonist’s interaction with the mise-en-scène, whether that involves a pleasantly morbid confrontation with a dancing skeleton (which unexpectedly returns Gloria’s gaze) or a revealing shot of a nude Gloria next to a nude tomcat, a creature that hides nothing and from which the woman has nothing to hide either (it seems living with Rodolf forestalls the option of going to the market with her skin uninhibited). If Gloria displays tremendous courage in anything, it is not in flaunting her nudity or looking for love after 50. She has my admiration mainly for not being afraid of a positive impression, which is not forced, but is completely in line with the protagonists refocusing of attention from the outside to the inside. Thanks to Paulina Garcia’s spontaneous performance and the fact that she doesn’t try to push major themes to the forefront and captivate the audience with formal embellishments, I found the film much more believable than Baumbach’s Frances Ha, which now seems to me an immature, more eager-to-please and thus less natural version of something similar. 80% (31.10.2017)