GLORIA (2013)

Well-received, but slightly off-putting middle-aged romance (make that anti-romance) about a lonely divorcée looking for . . . what? A partner? A cat? Sex? Someone to dance with? More involvement from her single son (with kid) and single daughter (with one on the way)? As slackly written & directed by Sebastián Lelio, Paulina García’s Gloria must be the most over-booked 50-something woman in Chile, with something going on every night. And not in the sad manner of filling out a dance card with empty gestures, staying busy to keep existential despair away, she’s much too enthusiastic to be read that way. (And the film, to its credit, isn’t marketing simple sympathy.) She ought to be too exhausted for the older mystery man she’s met at her favored dance club. Cinematically, the sex is unusually frank for this age group, but it’s her boyfriend’s manner of abruptly absenting himself from social situations that’s really odd. And why is he hiding her from his over-dependent daughters? (And wife?; he may not be divorced.) Gloria can’t figure him out. But neither can the film. He’s more literary device than character. We’re meant to applaud this single woman who, like a Timex watch, takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’, but Gloria’s refusal to sit on life’s sidelines feels built out of overused aphorisms. While the film’s final life-affirming dance (a solo in the midst of couples) to (what else?) G-L-O-R-I-A, Gloria!, is the sort of crap uplift you might expect to find Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton & Bette Midler vamping to at the end of FIRST WIVES CLUB/’96.