Gloria Bell: A toneless ring

Gloria Bell (2019) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for nudity, sexuality, profanity and drug use
By Derrick Bang

Director Alfred Hitchcock famously observed that “drama is life with the dull bits cut out.”

This film is nothing but life’s dull bits.

When Arnold (John Turturro) and Gloria (Julianne Moore) check into a fancy Las Vegas
hotel/casino, she expects they're about to enjoy a romantic weekend. She really should
know better, by this point in her own movie...

As therefore should be expected, it’s slow, tedious, monotonous and unrelentingly boring.

Director/co-scripter Sebastián Lelio’s approach is no-frills cinéma vérité: We essentially eavesdrop on a fiftysomething woman going about a longstanding routine involving work, family, down time and all the other minutia of a (more or less) average life. Singing to the car radio, while driving to and from work. Efficiently doing her job. Enduring an upstairs neighbor from hell. And so forth.

It feels very much like real life. Indeed, totally feels like real life. Which is rather silly, because most folks go to the movies to escape real life. Why spend money to endure 102 insufferable minutes of stuff that confronts us on a daily basis?

Nor does it help much, that our character — Gloria Bell — is portrayed by an actress as incandescent as Julianne Moore. The subtleties of her performance are sublime; numerous little moments convey a stunning wealth of emotions. Even so, it’s hard to do more than admire her talent and craft: “Wow, that’s a terrific bit of acting from Julianne Moore.”

We still don’t give a damn about Gloria Bell.

Particularly since this slice of her life — an American remake of Lelio’s 2013 Chilean film, Gloria — manipulates her in a manner that seems wholly inconsistent with how she’s introduced.

Gloria, 12 years divorced, lives alone in an apartment beneath the unit occupied by the landlady’s clearly unstable adult son, who shrieks incoherently at all hours of the day and night. (Nothing ever gets done about him.) Gloria occasionally returns home to find that a cat — always the same cat, of unknown origin — has somehow sneaked inside again. (We never learn how.)

She works as an insurance claims adjuster; her phone manner is calm, soothing and helpful. We imagine she gets terrific customer service ratings. She has a co-worker (Barbara Sukowa, as Melinda) who frets about their company’s meager retirement plan, and worries that she’ll have to work until she’s 80. Late in the film, Gloria helps Melinda exit the office. (Has she been fired? Departed of her own volition? We never know.)

Coco: A tasty treat

Coco (2017) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.22.17

This one’s deceptive.

At first blush, Pixar’s Coco feels like the saga of a little boy who desperately wants to embrace melody and song, but is thwarted by parents and relatives with a deeply rooted aversion to music.

As his faithful dog Dante watches attentively, Miguel prepares to receive a blessing from
his long-deceased Mamá Imelda: a necessary ritual, lest the boy be forced to remain
forever in the Land of the Dead. Alas, the blessing will come with strings attached...

That’s accurate enough, but merely the entry point to this wildly imaginative, gloriously colorful and unexpectedly poignant saga of family bonds. Co-directors Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina — who also co-scripted the story, alongside Jason Katz and Matthew Aldrich — have ingeniously employed Mexico’s annual Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebration to illustrate the importance of honoring — and remembering — past generations.

The narrative takes place during a single fast-paced day and night, and is laden with gentle messages that range from To Thine Own Self Be True, to There’s No Place Like Home.

In the tradition of Pixar’s best films, the tone veers between droll comedy and heartbreaking pathos, and from larkish excitement to edge-of-the-seat suspense. At the same time, we’re dazzled by the animated equivalent of phenomenal production design, and charmed by some cleverly integrated songs, including an endearing ballad written by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, the Academy Award-winning team behind the power anthem “Let It Go,” from Frozen.

The rather complex narrative defies an elevator pitch, and opens with a prologue that cleverly establishes back-story via Día de los Muertos paper-cut flags. We then meet 12-year-old Miguel (voiced with earnest sincerity by young Anthony Gonzalez), who chafes at the limitations imposed by a jovial clan of shoemakers.

This family business has become the pride of Santa Cecilia: a calling that began with Miguel’s great-great-grandmother Mamá Imelda, as a means of survival when her husband abandoned the family — including toddler daughter Coco — in order to follow his dream of becoming a famous musician. Mamá Imelda’s subsequent ban on music has been enforced strictly by subsequent generations, much to Miguel’s dismay.

He dreams of growing up to be a celebrated musician like his idol, Ernesto de la Cruz, who became the most famous musician in Mexican history: conquering pop charts, movies and concert stages.

But thanks to the disciplinarian edicts of his grandmother Abuelita (Renée Victor), the frustrated Miguel believes that he’s backed into an either/or corner: He must choose between his passion for music, and his love for his family. Efforts at persuasion merely harden Abuelita’s position, and so Miguel — having accidentally stumbled upon a family secret — yields to an ill-advised impulse, as night falls on Día de los Muertos.