Julianne Moore is one of the most celebrated actresses of all-time, having been acclaimed for many roles that display real-life human drama. Her characters are usually strong-willed women who maintain their dignity in times of extreme distress. Her characters are typically fully engaging, and even when she’s in a movie that’s subpar, her performance still manages to be one of the standout features of the film. This rings true for her latest feature, Gloria Bell, a movie which once again contains a great performance by Moore, which otherwise leaves very little to be desired.
The film follows Moore as the titular character. She’s been divorced for twelve years, and often spends much of her time at nightclubs, where she gleefully dances to throwback songs that cater to crowds older than 50. She one day meets a man at the club named Arnold (John Turturro) and begins dating him. They don’t immediately hit it off, but do get along as they have long discussions about life. Though Arnold has a difficult time detaching himself from his past, while the free-spirited Gloria attempts to keep pushing forward with her life, which leads to her discovering the complications that come with dating at her age.
The film often feels like the plot is second to Gloria herself. Gloria ultimately has no real goals at her age, looking to just live her life the way she wants to live it. And the film keeps that sort of spirit, never feeling like there’s a definitive conflict, and more so just depicts moments in Gloria’s life. There are moments of her just having lunch with her mother, played by Holland Taylor, as well as random, awkward exchanges with her son, played by Michael Cera. With the film mostly comprising of moments like these, the film heavily relies on Moore’s performance to really carry the movie.
And Moore does a solid job with the material here. Her performance feels very natural, with little quirky moments such as her constantly adding, “It’s mom” at the end of the voicemails she leaves her children, to never truly justifying many of the spontaneous decisions she makes throughout the film. She maintains a certain confidence about her, and outside of a handful of instances, never tries playing up certain moments as being bigger than they are, instead just going with life’s flow.
Gloria is a woman who enjoys having fun and the film conveys that through its soundtrack choices. There are moments where it feels like the film is a giant tribute to the 80’s, with songs such as the actual song “Gloria” as well as other 80’s pop songs like “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” dominating the scene, with Moore either wildly dancing along in the nightclub or joyfully singing along in her car on the way to work. The film shows us a character who still celebrates her past while never fully stuck in it. Gloria herself isn’t a woman who acts the way she did when she was younger, but still finds a way to enjoy all the things that made her feel young. And it’s as if the film encourages its audience to do the same.
Despite the fun soundtrack choices and Moore’s great performance, it’s unfortunately never fully enough to keep the audience consistently engaged. Since the film never has a full over-arching conflict, it often feels aimless. The plot surrounding Arnold makes for some solid grounded drama and John Turturro gives a solid performance, it does take some time to really get off the ground. And even when it does take off, it’s not for the entire movie, only feeling like a small fraction of the film’s 102 minute runtime. And when the movie breaks off from this story, never really coming back to it until much later in the film, the audience can quickly lose interest.
One’s not sure what Gloria’s going to do next, which harkens very true to life itself, but the issue is when she does make a decision, it doesn’t really reveal anything further about her character. While it doesn’t need to be a grandiose dramatic moment, it’s already established early on how spontaneous and sometimes awkward Gloria can be, and each scene - especially in the film’s second half - is just her being her, doing what she wants and moving on. There’s no real consequence to any of her actions, nor does it offer anything insightful to say that hasn’t been said early on in the film. Though the film is only an hour and forty minutes long, it does tend to drag because of how it just wanders about.
Gloria Bell offers another great performance by Julianne Moore that does make a statement how one can still enjoy their life and feel young even at an older age, but it makes that statement within the first half hour or so, and seems like a series of random adventures that feel mundane and don’t keep the audience engaged. The film has a solid message behind it, but it would have benefited more from being a short film rather than a feature length movie. Diehard fans of Julianne Moore may enjoy this, but there are plenty of other movies featuring her that are light years more enjoyable.
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