Gloria

Ever since I watched this, I've been trying to figure out what I think about this unusual John Cassavetes film. Unusual, because it's distinctly plot driven and because it contains one of those overly sentimental premises. Gena Rowlands plays a woman with a mysterious past, which we soon learn is her involvement in the mob, who takes in the eight-year-old son of a neighbor whose family just got eliminated by the mob. She's a tough talking dame who doesn't like kids and he's a tough Puerto Rican kid. It is also unusual because at time it verges into the territory of the action film, which I would have never envisioned from Cassavetes. The saving grace of the film is that despite his plot conventions, he still manages to allow the kind of visual and emotional freedom that makes the viewer think that they are peering into the lives of real people. I'm not sure what I think about the unorthodox casting choices of Rowlands as a gun totting mob mistress and John Adams as the boy. Part of it just feels wrong and another part of it feels like vintage Cassavetes. Any other director and the film would undoubtedly devolve into cheap sentimentalism, but while it doesn't fail in that regard, it can't succeed because ultimately Cassavetes just isn't a plot driven filmmaker.