Nevertheless, She Persisted

JULIANNE MOORE shines as a feisty, multifaceted fiftysomething in director Sebastián Lelio’s Gloria Bell.

- Molly Langmuir

About halfway through Gloria Bell, the title character, a woman well into middle age, is enjoying dinner with the man she’s been seeing when his phone begins to ring. On the other end of the line, she knows, is either his ex-wife or two grown but dependent daughters. That he cannot extricate himself from their lives—even during a romantic trip to Las Vegas—is the major conflict in their relationship. Finally, she grabs the phone, and with one deliberate, almost seductive motion, drops it into his bowl of soup.