Gloria 2013

Gloria

Gloria

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A smart, sensitive and bitterly funny romantic comedy.

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About Gloria 💬

• Not to miss... Paulina García is amazing!

Proving that passion and personal empowerment can strike at any age, Paulina García with a glorious performance in GLORIA. GLORIA is an uplifting story of an older woman rediscovering life, love, and heartbreak.

• Was it something that they said?

Gloria (Paulina García) is 58 years old and still feels young inside. Her children have all left home but she has no desire to spend her days and nights alone. Making a party out of her loneliness, she fills her nights seeking love in ballrooms for single adults. This fragile happiness changes the day she meets an ex-naval officer Rodolfo (Sergio Hernández), a 65-year-old, who recently got divorced. Their intense passion, to which Gloria gives everything as she feels it may well be her last, leaves her dancing between hope and despair. Gloria will have to pull herself together and find a new strength to realize that, in the last act of her life, she could burn brighter than ever.

GLORIA is a paean to the tenacity and courage of a generation of Chilean women who are determined to keep on feeling, dancing, and living. It features an evocative, vibrant soundtrack ranging from global classics to Latin American hits.

• DIRECTOR'S NOTE

The film is exclusively and radically told from a single point of view: Gloria's. There isn't a single frame in which her body isn't present. There isn't a single scene that isn't about how she's feeling things and the world. Gloria plays a supporting role of sorts in the lives of those around her.

The film's game is to turn this supporting character into an absolute leading role. The paradox is that -in most scenes- she operates as a supporting character since important things are usually happening amongst other people. Yet the film forces us to observe these events through Gloria's eyes: those of a woman searching for her place in a hardened world that doesn't seem to have too much space for her, but with the attitude of someone defending her individual freedom with heart and pride.

This insistence of following her all the time allows for the spectator to infiltrate beneath Gloria's skin, to never stop watching her, and to connect directly with her emotions. The film's screenplay arises from certain stories that have happened to people that we know or from anecdotes that we've been told; they're real events that, in one way or another, Santiago has made possible. Santiago is practically another character in the film. GLORIA is an individual story that takes place over the backdrop of a city thrown into upheaval. The leading character's quest to be loved and valued is set over the clamors of a Chilean society that wants its rights to be recognized. Chile is a modern and thriving country, but its social contract is very unjust.

Gloria's personal vindications subtly communicate the community's latent discontent. In the film, the collective's transforming power is reinforced by Gloria's own desire for change. I think that the energy in Gloria's character is what makes this film vibrant and human. In a certain sense, Gloria is like Rocky: the world strikes at her and beats her down, but she manages to get up once more and carry on forward, holding her head up high. This, to me, was always a great reason for which to film this woman's story, to film what we can see of her on the surface and to try film her mystery as well.

• INTERVIEW WITH SEBASTIÁN LELIO

Q: How did the idea of making this film and telling the story of GLORIA to come about?

Sebastián Lelio: GLORIA arises from the question of whether there could be a film about the world of women from my mother's generation, and what this film would be like. It comes from the intuition that a film can sometimes be closer than you think, sometimes even just a few feet away. I wanted to infiltrate this generation's unknown planet and see what happened there.

There is something moving about these women approaching their 60s who transit through Santiago, Chile, today. Women who fight to find their place in a world that treats them with harshness, who sing in the car, who have been left somewhat on their own, for whom no one has too much time, and that, in spite of the years that have passed, refuse to give up and want to keep on feeling, dancing, and living. The film reclaims that right, and it does so from the fascination with an endearing woman who is clinging on to life with her teeth and nails.

Q: The soundtrack plays an important role in the film. What was the music selection process like?

Sebastián Lelio: GLORIA is a film about feelings. And music (for what can have more feeling than music?) constitutes a central element in this tale, working almost as a Greek choir, constantly contaminating the story. At the same time, the characters express themselves through music, making the emotions of the songs that they listen, sing or dance to their very own, unconsciously commenting on their own lives, as if the music were a mirror of their own processes and dilemmas.

The film's soundtrack belongs to Gloria's generation. It contains songs that range from worldwide hits to Latin American and Chilean cult songs. There are some disco tunes, as well as boleros, romantic ballads, salsas, cumbias, some rock'n'roll and one bossa nova: ''Waters of March'' by Tom Jobim. This last song is very special to me because it was one of the guides that led me to find the final tone for the film. I aimed for Gloria to have something from bossa nova: a poetics of everyday life, a painful sort of levity, a certain natural charm, a little humor, and a little pain, but above all, humanity and emotion.

Q: How does GLORIA relate to your previous films?

Sebastián Lelio: I think that GLORIA is the natural consequence of my three previous films. It's a larger production, with more characters and more locations, but it insists upon worlds that I have explored before, and enquires, from a new perspective, into certain thematic and formal searches that I have developed before in La Sagrada Familia, Navidad and El Año del Tigre: the insistent observation of characters going through an evolutionary crossroads; family as a sacred trap; the interest in the tension that exists between person and character; and the conviction that film is a face-on battle.

• INTERVIEW WITH PAULINA GARCÍA

Q: How did you prepare for this character?

Paulina García: Sebastian guided me through my preparation, flooding me with books and films. Then came the individual rehearsals stage, where we analyzed each scene, the way it would work visually, and how we would face Gloria's relationship with each one of the film's characters. During the two months that led up to the shooting, I was so immersed in Gloria's universe that when the process ended I felt as if I were ''waking up'' from a deep night.

Q: What was the biggest challenge of playing GLORIA?

Paulina García: Gloria observes that the rhythms and courses of the events that take place around her do not depend on her. Gloria's internal movements are subtle, definitive, and concrete. Combining these three concepts was a difficult task.

Gloria Movie Details 🎥

Directed by

Sebastián Lelio

Writing Credits

Sebastián Lelio

Gonzalo Maza

Starring

Paulina García

Sergio Hernández

Marcial Tagle

Diego Fontecilla

Fabiola Zamora

Antonia Santa María

Alejandro Goic

Cristián Carvajal

Pablo Krögh

Coca Guazzini

Hugo Moraga

Cinematography by

Benjamín Echazarreta

Genres: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Countries: Chile, Spain

Gloria Official Trailer

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