Critics reviews

The dialogue pontificates on themes that Gloria Bell never really explores, leaving pockets of awkward dead air around every attempt to give the story some level of context beyond the arc of a character who doesn’t remotely change.

I drew close to this Gloria in particular, and watched with relief as she danced into a realm of her own, beyond compare.

In some moments, "Gloria Bell" is almost an exact recreation of the original, in shot construction and edit choices, even in dialogue (the script was co-written by Alice Johnson Boher and Lelio), but there's enough freshness in the approach that makes "Gloria" a unique experience, funny and a little bit messy. The mess feels real.

Beat for beat and subtly different line for line, the two movies can seem eerily alike; Lelio has likened “Gloria Bell” to a cover version. The redo feels lighter, perhaps because it is unburdened by originality.

There is a kind of daring in the film’s very modesty, in Lelio’s decision to forego the thrills of melodrama and the lure of glamour to follow an unexceptional woman, a divorcee, through the peaks and valleys of her days—gentle peaks and valleys that wound her pride but never crush her spirit.

The film undertakes its own step-by-step journey toward clarity and confidence, so winning over its world-premiere audience that they applauded with gusto, not just after but during the film. Some films at TIFF are small and others are self-consciously Big; Gloria Bell was a rare case of a movie from the former category that reveals itself, slowly but surely, as one of the latter.

One of the pleasures of a movie like “Gloria Bell” is how it turns an average life into the stuff of immersive fiction.