Partaking of Gloria

I caught a few scenes of Gloria (1980) while flipping through the channels. I kept flipping back (I was also reading and watching some college football) to the film because of a two performances: Gloria, the bad ass mama ex-gangster girlfriend, played by Gena Rowlands and Phil Dawn, a young kid who loses his parents to the mob, by John Adames. Rowlands, whom I remembered from The Mighty, is wonderful, a rare tough female role who isn’t merely a femme fatal nor a wacko—just tough. In only a few scenes the young (6 or 7?) kid blew me away: “I’m the man . . . you ain’t the man . . . I love you to death” he says with a high pitched voice to the bad ass mama. It was terrible acting but it cracked me up. Later, while traveling alone to Pittsburg after Gloria’s leaves him to settle the score with the mob, several hundred dollar bills rolled up in his sock, he approaches a ticket window: “Pictsburg” he says. Sadly, with Holden Caulfield like mourning for the ducks, it seems little John never acted again.

My wife will never understand why I enjoy checking in to a film already in progress, watching a few minutes here and there, maybe catching the closing scene. She does have a legitimate point. I still don't fully understand the plot of Gloria but I got the essence of it I think--a tough love kind of relationship between an older woman whose had a hard life and young kid who now has something to believe it. For me it’s like tasting different foods; now I’ve partook of Gloria and it was good, not good enough to slide it onto my Netflix Queue but a nice little bedtime snack, something I wouldn’t have experienced without a bit of flipping.