Gloria was made by Chilean film-maker Sebastian Lelio in 2013. The late-50s, divorced, Santiago-based heroine of the title is full of life. She dresses up to attend singles clubs, laughs readily, dances exuberantly, sings along to the radio, and is generally up for any new adventure that happens along.

But she's a bit too much alone for her liking. Her kids are somewhat distant, and leave her to do the running as far as contact is concerned. Her nearest neighbour (and his cat) are pretty weird. So when she finds an apparently nice older guy, Rodolfo, you want it to work out for her.

According to Javier Porta Fouz, the movie was inspired by the director's mother and her generation. Clearly these were thought-provoking women, impressing on him their unwillingness to slip quietly into a grey and joyless old age. 

Gloria and her beau quickly connect romantically -- leading, as Susan Wloszcyna describes it, to "several honestly depicted, completely unglamorous sexual encounters between two people of a certain age that Hollywood rarely attempts".

(The "Americans-wouldn't-do-this" thing strikes several critics. Mick LaSalle, for example, remarks: "We don't make movies in America like Gloria, so we have to import them. I wish we'd import more -- and make a few, as well... If this were an American movie, Gloria would be portrayed as pathetic or sex-addicted, and the journey of the movie would be about her finding salvation in a treatment program or in sexless domesticity. Fortunately, Chile is very far away, and so we meet a divorced woman who is quite happy with herself... If it were re-made in the United States, Gloria would be a great role for an American actress, though the American impulse to make every work of art into a moral lesson might screw this one up." Actually, it was remade in America -- but by Lelio himself. Gloria Bell, starring Julianne Moore and set in Los Angeles, came out in 2019 to critical acclaim.)


Bangladesh, 2014. I haven't made it to Chile yet. So my photos honour women in various walks of life from various other parts of the world







But I digress...

Back at the story, Rodolfo turns out to be flaky. Divorced he may be, but he's still very much emotionally attached to his ex-wife and children, and always at their beck and call. When he twice runs out on Gloria, she decides to call it quits. She stumbles into an unfortunate rebound fling, but she recovers from that, takes a bit of sweet revenge on the annoying Rodolfo, and picks up her life where he interrupted it.

LaSalle again: "Gloria is not really about change, but about the courage and the emotional discipline required in order to stay the same. Its central insight is that this becomes harder as people get older, that it requires reaching down and finding the desire and capacity to embrace life over and over, again and again. In this way, perhaps there is change in Gloria, but it's the change of purposeful and conscious renewal."

We leave her at a wedding, where Umberto Tozzi's Gloria is pounding out of the speakers. Wloszcyna: "It is up to us to decide whether the sight of Garcia once again alone -- by choice this time -- is a moment of triumph or resignation. Me, I was cheering inside."

Me too. It's an act of real heroism to be able to get yourself back on your feet after disappointment, and just dance your heart out -- all by yourself if necessary.

That song, by the way, is very interesting. The version you probably recall is the one by Laura Branigan, which seems to have a bit of a downer on its central character: "Gloria, you're always on the run now, running after somebody; you gotta get him somehow; I think you've got to slow down before you start to blow it; I think you're headed for a breakdown so be careful not to show it..."

Tozzi's original version, on the other hand, is very different in import. In the movie it is sung in Spanish, and though the text is not a literal translation of the Italian original, it is very much in the same spirit. This version of the song pays homage to a woman that the singer misses and longs for: "Gloria, you're missing in the air; your presence is missing, your warm innocence; you're missing in my mouth which says your name without wanting to; and I will write my story with the word Gloria, because here by your side the morning lights up, and truth and lies alike have the name Gloria."

The radically different lyrics in the English and Spanish/Italian versions have confused some critics. What's for sure, though, is that the Spanish/Italian version leaves us with a much more upbeat view of the heroine. We're sorry about the disappointment Rodolfo has brought her, and we're aware that she may never get exactly what she wants, but we're confident she will be OK. And though we don't really want them to get back together, we do kind of hope he's really missing her...


Myanmar, 2012









Lelio also directed Una Mujer Fantastica (A Fantastic Woman), which came out in 2017, and won an Oscar the following year for best foreign-language movie (Chile's first for a feature film).

We start by meeting another couple, Orlando and Marina. There are many differences between them. He's in his late 50s; she's about 30 years younger. He's comfortably off; she's working at least two jobs, as a nightclub singer and a waitress. He's divorced, but he still has a family that cares about him; she, on the other hand, is alone.  


South Korea, 2015

Despite the differences, they obviously suit each other. They live together; they go out for special dinners together; they're planning a holiday together. They're happy.

But then Orlando unexpectedly dies. That's when we find out about his family. And that's when we find out another difference in this partnership. Marina is transgender, and Orlando's death leaves her painfully exposed to all the hurtful suspicion and prejudice of the authorities and of the family.

All she wants is the right to grieve openly, as the beloved partner of the deceased. Instead, she is rejected, humiliated, and harassed on all sides.


Iran, 2000



But she doesn't give in. She doesn't allow herself to be cowed. As Ryan Gilbey expresses it: "This battle is played out repeatedly in eloquent visual terms. Marina's oppressors try to strip her of beauty and dignity, and the film keeps restoring those qualities by making her magnificence indisputable."

The movie finishes with her performing not in a nightclub but in a formal classical setting. She sings beautifully. She's resplendent. Again, you somehow know that Lelio's Marina may not be destined for an easy life, but she'll be OK.

Marina is superbly played by Chilean transgender actress and singer Daniela Vega (whom we'd already seen in La Jauria). According to Lelio, she was the inspiration for the film.  

BBC Mundo explores the reasons for the movie's success, and identifies three.

Firstly, love and loss form a universal story that readily engages our empathy. What the director wants to explore, however, is how far that empathy goes. Are we accepting and empathetic, he asks, right up to the point when some "other" knocks on our door? That's when we find out whether our empathy and acceptance are purely conceptual or actually real.

Secondly, A Fantastic Woman deals quite subtly with the issue of transgender experience. Lelio comments: "I never wanted to make a propaganda film, but rather a film about love and loss." It doesn't delve into Marina's background or the process that brought her to be where she is. It just accepts that she is who she is.

Thirdly, the cinematographic language is interesting and genre-blending (examples here).


Indonesia, 2010



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These are both impressive movies, which -- in my view, at least -- manage to avoid the traps of the "male gaze". Lelio, it seems, works very closely with his female protagonists, and is highly aware of the insidious power of camera angles. Discussing a later movie, for example, he talks about his lead female characters, and his practice of "placing the camera for them as opposed to for me".

Researcher Alice Blackhurst, along the same lines, observes: "Building upon Laura Mulvey’s tracing of oppression back to an initial experience of being looked at or evaluated by another’s gaze, A Fantastic Woman asks us what we ‘see’ when confronted with Marina’s story, and, in the process, exposes film, love and identity formation as suspended theatres of projections rather than established frames." A Fantastic Woman is notable for what it refuses to focus its lens on.

Definitely a director to seek out in the future.


India, 2016