Oy, I thought up so many titles for this blog:
Americans Can Sure ‘F’ Up a Screenplay
Gloria Bell: At Least I Liked the Soundtrack
What a (Bad) Difference Five Years Can Make
Can you tell my opinion? Ok, I saw the original Gloria back in 2013 written and directed by Sebastion Lelio and after I’m done here I’ll search and see if it’s in my blog history. I know, for a fact, that I liked the movie a lot and remember telling my son to even go see it.
And after seeing such an empowering female lead last week in Woman at War, I couldn’t help but walk out of the ‘new’ Gloria Bell defeated. Not exactly the attitude you want going into happy hour on a Friday. Was it Alice Johnson Boher’s butchering (my perjorative verb) of Sebastian’s screenplay? Was it Julianne Moore playing the role much too understated? Was it that we can forgive and appreciate passion in Spanish culture and not American? Was John Turturro‘s character simply too sympathetic? Probably a combo of all these factors.
Or simply I’m tired of the extremes our culture has gone to rectify Me, Too to the point where abusive females are cheered instead of taken to task. Can we all agree putting someone’s cell phone in soup is immature and rude under any circumstances? Or when taking a significant other to a family celebration to which the S.O. is clearly an outsider and has even forewarned you that he/she is not comfortable with functional families and then is summarily ignored that the said hostess/host who ignored the S.O. is at fault. Perhaps I relate too closely to this scenario having happened to me at Thanksgiving (the straw breaking the camel’s back was the hostess saying, “Well, maybe we’ll see you next year and maybe *** will be back with his ex-girlfriend”). And while I didn’t do a full Turturro, I made it to the hallway ready to get an Uber back to my hotel.
Back to my “Me, Too Much” rant, can we also agree that women are responsible for their own actions, whether they’ve been hurt emotionally or physically, the help or action you take after is up to the individual? If you feel like punishing yourself further by getting drunk and hooking up with more dirt bags, get some help because that’s on you. But in Gloria Bell, Julianne does just that. She smokes a bag of unknown weed from a suicidal man who lives in the apartment above her—stupid and then goes on a drinking binge after Turturro leaves her in Vegas. Dumb. How about going to see a movie or a show or, I know, getting on a plane and going home?
In fairness to Gloria Bell, I do believe the male lead in the original Gloria was more of a cad, which made the Paulina Garcia less pathetic. Here, Turturro is simply a mixed up guy who should be left until he finds some therapy, not pummeled by Julianne Moore.
And on a positive, I did love the soundtrack. The music of the seventies sparked joy on one side (Earth Wind and Fire) and sang of pathos on the other (Air Supply). I wish we could back to feeling things in 2019 rather than celebrate vengeance and bad behavior.
