The process of parental imprinting is an easy to comprehend miracle, but it’s rarely been explicated as effortlessly as it is in Marie Amachoukeli-Garsacq’s second feature, Àma Gloria. The parent, in this case, is not biological, but rather a nanny for a little girl she has essentially raised since infancy. Six-year-old Cléo (Louise Mauroy-Panzani) lost her mother to cancer when she was a baby, and her father, though loving and thoughtful, is a busy man, and so he hired Gloria (Ilça Moreno Zego), a middle aged immigrant from Cabo Verde, to take care of her in their Paris home. Cléo’s adoration of Gloria is so impeccable that you wonder if the child has appropriated the older woman’s hairstyle (minus the dashing shock of yellow) in order to make the identification more material. And being a six-year-old, Cléo cannot really fathom that Gloria might have a life away from her. One day, Gloria receives a phone call saying that her mother in Cabo Verde has died, and so she must go back permanently to be with her own two children, the older of which is pregnant. Cléo refuses to understand the situation so Gloria sets up a compromise with the permission of her father: Cléo can come to Cabo Verde to visit during summer break and get to know Gloria’s children.

As could be expected, the visit is awkward in more ways than one. Cléo, who has been somewhat spoiled by Gloria, demands her time, but this isn’t Paris, where Cléo was her only responsibility. In addition to taking care of her two children and spending time with their father, Gloria is using the money she made in France to build a hotel. Since much of the movie is told through the POV of Cléo, many of these scenes are purposely vague, but the idea gets through that Cléo’s confusion masks resentment, especially toward Cesar (Fredy Gomes Tavares), Gloria’s adolescent son who mutually resents Cléo for having monopolized his mother’s life while he himself was a child. Amachoukeli-Garsacq attempts to put across these inchoate feelings with colorful animated sequences that illustrate certain points in the relationships being presented, and while they sometimes make matters more confusing, they also prepare us for the coming-to-terms that all parties, especially Cléo, must navigate before proceeding with their lives. Obviously, Cléo is incapable of articulating these matters, but the director makes us understand not only how Cléo’s mind works, but how she comes to see that growing up is painful.

Most importantly, Amachoukeli-Garsacq grounds us in the culture of Cabo Verde in order to imprint on the audience the sense of Gloria having a settled, permanent life there. If anything, Paris was the anomaly, and while Gloria loves Cléo just as much as she does her own flesh-and-blood, there’s not much in the former Portuguese colony that Cléo can identify with. Inevitably, it will require a crisis or two—at one point Cléo invokes “spirits” to kill Gloria’s new grandchild—in order to make her realize that other people, like Gloria, have their own unique existence apart from herself. Amachoukeli-Garsacq seems to be telling us that this realization is the most monumental one we will ever experience. 

The coming-to-terms in Pedro Almodóvar’s 31-minute English-language western, Strange Way of Life, happens much later in the central characters’ lives, and involves both sex and violence, in that order. Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke play two former ranch hands who reunite many years later to consummate, probably not for the first time, the love they felt for each other when they were young bucks. The difference now is that Jake (Hawke) is the sheriff of an unnamed town and Silva (Pascal) is the father of a fugitive wanted for murdering Jake’s widowed sister-in-law, so the tumble in the hay immediately takes on the cast of an ulterior motive, at least on Silva’s part. But as in all things Almodóvar, it’s never that simple.

Apparently, Almodóvar was initially given the chance to direct Brokeback Mountain and passed on it, thinking that Hollywood would not really go for what he wanted to do with Annie Proulx’s short story. Years later, this is basically what he had in mind; or, if it isn’t, it’s what he thinks a story about two cowboys in love could lead to. And while his idea of the lives these two could have led is compelling and his visual and aural choices are, as always, superb, his treatment of western cliches is half-baked if not downright condescending. Reportedly, he greatly respects what Ang Lee did with Brokeback even if he doesn’t necessarily agree with it. This short exercise in what might have been indicates that Lee was probably the better choice.

Àma Gloria, in French and Portuguese, opens July 12 in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Bunkamura Le Cinema Shibuya Miyashita (050-6875-5280).

Strange Way of Life, in English and Spanish, opens July 12 in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551), Cinema Qualite Shinjuku (03-3352-5645).

Àma Gloria home page in Japanese

Strange Way of Life home page in Japanese

Àma Gloria photo (c) 2023 Lilies Films

Strange Way of Life photo (c) 2024 El Deseo D.A. S.L.U.