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.
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| 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.)
