Gloria! was watched as part of the Seattle International Film Festival 2024! It had its showing on Sunday, May 12th as part of the festival, and it was the North American premiere of this film! You can see my interview with Margherita Vicario, the director/writer, here!
Let’s talk about Gloria. Well, Gloria isn’t a character, so we can’t. It is however a common name/word used in religious songs, especially in Italian. You know, Gloria in Excelsis Deo? It means Glory really, but Gloria is also a nice name.
Instead we will talk about Lucia (Carlotta Gamba), who is at a school for choir music training, somewhere in Italy, in the 18th century. Like a lot of girls brought to the school, she was an orphan and so it is also an orphanage, bringing these girls to devout religion but also providing them food, shelter, and a service they can give back to their community. Lucia is also mute! That doesn’t really affect her hearing at all though, so she can still play instruments, she just cannot sing.
Oh, let me reiterate. Lucia can HEAR really well. In fact, she can imagine music all around her, in the everyday mendacity of life. Mr. Music would be so impressed. She also knows music can better than how it is currently presented, slow and dead. It can be upbeat, it can be fresh, it can have many different instruments providing different elements, and yes, even the human voice can be used to greater lengths.
But she is a woman, in a man’s world, and because this is holy music, it has to be done a SPECIFIC way. But with an upcoming visit by the Pope, yes, THE Pope, she thinks it is time to rebel, to spread new music, and to present to his greatest holiness what music could really be like.
Also starring Maria Vittoria Dallasta, Galatéa Bellugi, Veronica Lucchesi, Sara Mafodda, Paolo Rossi, and Elio.
Get up loser, we are going to pop-ify these sounds.
It looks amazing, from the costumes, the set, and the cameras used. It is portraying a dull religious school, but we can still see color when its needed, even in the darkest of moments for the characters, who are going to fight to overcome whats shackling them down. Overcome what? We are going to fight the patriarchy! And hell, even fight the papacy too! Men telling women what to do, how to think, what is right and wrong, its gone now! Let them live their lives!
Okay, yes, this is a work of fiction, and Lucia herself is not based on a person from history. And it is very unlikely that the sort of songs made in this movie, would have been made 3 to 400 years ago. But that is okay, because the point really is that these women were creative, and were not able to express their creativity. And apparently, thanks to some Napoleon nonsense at some point, works that were created by these women composers became lost. At the end we find out this film is dedicated to those women, who likely had a voice, but it was silenced at some point and aren’t people in the history books as a result.
That is a good enough cause for me.
Like I said, it is a very great looking film. But also, it is just fun. It is a good time to be had, while shining light on a real unspoken part of history. It is silly, it is modern, but the cast of characters feel distinct enough and well. They just want to have fun.
Gloria! is fun.