Gloria, a 58 year old divorcee is desperately trying to maintain importance in the life of her adult children and alleviate the boredom she feels between her work, home life and a suicidal neighbour by hitting the night clubs in Santiago, Chili. Dancing to the hits of her youth she chances upon Rodolfo, is he the one to add a bit of spice to her life?
Sebastian Lelio film could have been a melodramatic mess but, thankfully, the star turn and 2013 Berlin film festival prize winning performance by Paulina Garcia means that Gloria is a treat. It is refreshing to see an older actress given a role that explores love, recklessness, joy and sadness in a way that doesn’t make it about her age but focuses squarely on her personality. Is she just a hopeless romantic? What is she searching for really and truly and can it ever be ok to try and have a second youth?
There are some amazing scenes in the films and beware that the sex scenes are graphic. Sebastian Lelio loves women and is not here giving us a poor excuse about a film for a younger actress. Life doesn’t stop at the age of 35 indeed it gets better and better.
This is a dramatic comedy that doesn’t shy away from touching upon what life is like for the post Pinochet generation that lived through the purges. Is the way they live now and their moral code a direct result of that time. Is the young their only hope or does that generation need to find their moral code again and stand tall. The relationship of Rodolfo and Gloria almost mirrors what people felt during those Pinochet years – the high, the low, the terror and then the freedom of saying no more will they be abused. The pastiche scene of Gloria brandishing a paint gun cannot help but transport film fans to another seminal film: Scarface.
The closing scene made me think of that of Little Miss Sunshine, it is quite unexpected but quite justifiably the perfect ending that made me want to join in.
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