GLORIA (A-minus) - What does Gloria want? A lover, a companion, adult children who seem to care about something, a good car stereo to sing along with. Maybe to be a little naughty. To be young -- or at least not old -- for just a little while longer, by dancing the night away in a disco, the site of the movie's opening and closing scenes.
Paulina Garcia stars in the title role of this moving Chilean drama (from Sebastian Lelio) as a divorced office worker pushing 60 who yearns to find passion before old age slowly drains the carnal joy out of life. Along comes Rodolfo (Sergio Hernandez), a recently divorced owners of an activity center (paintball, bungee-jumping) that suggests immaturity on his part (she belittles his frivolous "toys"). His phone buzzes incessantly with hectoring calls from his needy ex and adult daughters. He's not only emotionally unavailable but also too quick on the trigger in bed. He wears a truss since his gastric bypass surgery. That man has baggage. Gloria, meanwhile, stays in shape and dotes on her makeup and hygiene. She still hopes that those things matter, that the hunt-and-chase can still thrill. At one point Rodolfo reads her a love poem, and it brings her to tears -- as his phone rings and takes him out of the moment. (She also breaks down when her daughter reads a mushy email from her boyfriend.)
Gloria's son and daughter also are distant, borderline estranged. The son is separated and has a wailing infant; her daughter is pregnant by her Swedish boyfriend. Her ex-husband sports a younger, pot-smoking girlfriend. She brings Rodolfo to a birthday party to meet them all, and it goes poorly. Gloria dumps Rodolfo but takes him back; the sex has gotten better (as the raw scenes of middle-age coupling attest), and he truly has genuine feelings for her.
A neighbor's hairless, wrinkly cat keeps sneaking into her apartment. It creeps her out, she says, because it looks like a mouse or a bat. Or maybe because it might be a metaphor for her aging private parts? Garcia is elastic physically. At times she looks 45, at other times (without her glasses and makeup) she could be 65. At times she is sultry and sexy; at other times, with her retro, owlish glasses, sagging face and frumpy fashion choices, she could be mistaken for an old transvestite.
Gloria is determined. She's not sadly clinging to her youth, but rather is refusing to acknowledge that it's completely gone. She takes yoga classes at her daughter's studio. She boldly flirts with men at the clubs. She stumbles across some marijuana and lights up. She soars with glee during her bungee jump and whirls on a merry-go-round. She drinks (to excess at times), she sings, she dances, she blushes like a schoolgirl.
But, as a trip to her physician reminds us, old age is around the corner. Why fight the inevitable? (A cute display of a dancing marionette skeleton entertaining a crowd in a strip mall is a little obvious but nonetheless charming.) At dinner with Rodolfo and another couple, they lament the loss of a genuine social structure in Chile and the soullessness of modern technology. Gloria's enduring human interaction is hearing the voice of her upstairs neighbor, an angry young man raging at all hours at a real or imagined scornful lover. He frightens her, but -- ah -- there's the passion.
What does Gloria want? She wants to live!
Now cue her disco-era theme song and clear the dance floor.
BONUS TRACK
The love poem read to Gloria:
I’d like to be a nest if you were a little bird.
I’d like to be a scarf if you were a neck and were cold.
If you were music, I’d be an ear.
If you were water, I’d be a glass.
If you were light, I’d be an eye.
If you were a foot, I’d be a sock.
If you were the sea, I’d be a beach.
And if you were still the sea, I’d be a fish, and I’d swim in you.
And if you were the sea, I’d be salt.
And if I were salt, you’d be lettuce, an avocado or at least a fried egg.
And if you were a fried egg, I’d be a piece of bread.
And if I were a piece of bread, you’d be butter or jam.
If you were jam, I’d be the peach in the jam.
If I were a peach, you’d be a tree.
And if you were a tree, I’d be your sap
And I’d course through your arms like blood.
And if I were blood, I’d live in your heart.
(Gracias)
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