Thursday, November 09, 2006

[1980] GLORIA: My first Cassavetes! This is allegedly not the one to start with and I probably agree--I enjoyed it but it's pretty slight and flawed by a child performance that's not so much terrible as it is unfathomable--the kid was given gobs of dialogue no six-year-old (or thereabouts) would ever say. I think the idea was to have sort of an aging version of a gun moll character from old noirs (Gena Rowlands) be forced into this situation where she'd have to care for this kid despite having minimal maternal instincts. She's found herself taking care of a kid whose family was killed by the mob and he's got this book with names and bank accounts in it that the mob still wants. And she's tough as nails and they're on the run and if this was a normal movie she'd be a guy and he'd be, like, a woman twenty years younger. But it isn't so the somewhat inexplicable bonding between them occurs at a parent-child level, excepting one bizarre scene where he tries to seduce her. It's definitely a different movie, so if you're in the mood for a familiar story told in an unconventional way here it is.

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