Out now: Gloria Bell

It’s been twelve years since she was divorced but Gloria Bell (Julianne Moore) hasn’t given up on finding love again. A regular at LA’s surprisingly thriving mature-age disco scene (where the hits of the 70s play all night long), she’s relentlessly optimistic when to the casual observer it looks like she doesn't have all that much to be optimistic about. Her day job is a dull office slog, while her nights are often spent listening to the ranting lunatic who lives upstairs – he’s the son of her landlord, so there’s only so many complaints she can make – and shooing his hairless cat out of her kitchen.

Her children (Michael Cera and Caren Pistorius) are still on the scene but only just; they’re both already distant, and they’re moving towards big changes that will take them away from her. Then she meets divorced former marine and paintball park owner Arnold (John Turturro) and tentatively they begin a relationship. The only problem is his clingy family; will he be able to start again with someone new? Does he even really want to?

Chilean writer-director Sebastián Lelio hasn’t quite made a scene-for-scene remake of the 2013 version (simply titled Gloria), but it comes close – which makes its shift in tone all the more impressive. In the original, Gloria’s desperation comes through more firmly; she’s a woman for whom time is running out. The Arnold character is more sinister (he’s much older, and having a military past in Chile means something very different), the film's overall tone darker. She’s still dancing, but the dance is a little more frantic.

Here though, it’s the comedy that’s played up. The set-piece scenes have a freer, more spontaneous feel (the LA sunshine helps), while the smaller moments in Gloria’s existence are filmed with an eye towards the absurdity of life. They’re rarely laugh-out-loud scenes, but they open the film up and give it a looser, airy vibe. In this version Arnold is still a man with a darker side and the film never treats him as a joke, but Turturro plays him with a lighter, more wounded, touch. He’s never a threat, just a man who’s given his life over to rules and order and can’t quite break away now that his devotion to duty is being used to keep him tied down.

It’s Moore who shines throughout. Again and again she makes fresh and vital moments that from someone else would easily feel stale (even scenes where she sings along to her car radio). Above all, she feels constantly alive, always present in the moment while her worries remain just under the surface, only rarely letting them show to devastating effect. This film is an exploration of her, and of how she’s making it through life; through good times or bad she remains defiantly, triumphantly herself.

Gloria Bell is out now on DVD

- Anthony Morris