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Enough Said warned against befriending your new boyfriend's ex-wife. The Great Beauty showed what the sex, Botox and penthouse rave scene was like for wealthy Roman pensioners. And now Gloria chips in with full-frontal insight into post-divorce dating in Chile.
All three films have felt fresh and exciting – this won Paulina García the best actress award at Berlin, and it's gloriously strange and slippery, impossible to pin down – at once funny, uplifting, moving and deeply disquieting. What it's not is parochial: Lelio speaks to the ties that strangle in all relationships. Gloria's new lover is smothered by pathetic daughters, our heroine hobbled by an over-functional family life and, perhaps, a thirst for irrationality that's stronger than her hankering after companionship. Both director and star keep it mysterious; this leaves as strange and complicated a taste as Claire Denis's Beau Travail.
