PARTING SHOT
Illustration by BRITT SPENCER
“WHEN THE WORLD ENDS, I HOPE I GO DOWN DANCING,” SAYS GLORIA Bell, the titular character in director Sebastián Lelio’s new American film—a cover version, as he has described it, of his “secret musical,” the 2013 Chilean film Gloria. In both movies, the character is a mother of two grown kids who lives alone and works a mundane job. She is a free spirit who smokes weed, does yoga and dances her nights away in clubs, where, in Gloria Bell, she hooks up with a new man (played by the terrific John Turturro). Simple enough. But as often happens when the Oscar-winning Julianne Moore is the star, the ordinary becomes sublime. Her performance has been heaped with praise, and the opening weekend box office was second only to Captain Marvel in New York and Los Angeles. Not bad for a small film about a middle-aged divorcée. “Sometimes I would come home after filming, exhausted, and think, I didn’t do anything,” Moore tells Newsweek. “The scenes were so subtle, so minutely drawn; not much happens—and yet everything happens. I absolutely loved it.”