Àma Gloria, the review: an intimate and delicate film by director Marie Amachoukeli

Our review of Àma Gloria, the opening film of the Semaine de la Critique, parallel section of the Cannes Film Festival 2023.

It’s not just blood ties that make a family and as it is often said, there are children of the belly and children of the heart in the world. Gloria time by Marie Amachoukeli tells just this: a strong and intense bond that knows no race, religion or culture; an almost primordial, instinctive and very powerful feeling capable of uniting two people for life.

Presented as the opening film of the Semaine de la Critique, that of the French director is a film of great emotional and visual impact, an intimate and delicate story of the maternal relationship between a nanny and a little girl who, with her disarming simplicity, offers the viewer a live cross-section of the soul of the two characters. In this review of Gloria time we hope to be able to tell the many interesting elements of a production that really struck us straight to the heart and that served as a forerunner for this parallel section of the seventy-sixth Cannes Film Festival which this year seems to promise extremely interesting titles.

Love and distance in the plot

Cléo is a smart and lively little girl who, after the loss of her mother, lives alone with her father and nanny, Gloria, originally from the Republic of Cape Verde who emigrated to France. There is a wonderful understanding and affection between the two: Gloria is to all intents and purposes the mother that the little girl did not have, the protagonist of a daily life made up of many precious little moments. However, the woman has a family in her town who, after a mourning, need her presence: her older daughter is about to have a baby, while her younger one has seen her very few times and struggles to recognize her as a parent. The separation is inevitably excruciating and for this reason Cléo’s father gives her permission to spend one last summer with her beloved nanny there in Cape Verde, a place with characteristics almost diametrically opposed to those of bourgeois France where the little girl is used to living.

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Reflection on motherhood

We mentioned it in our introduction: Gloria time it is a film that talks about family relationships, ties that go beyond not only the domestic hearth but cultural differences themselves. The relationship between Cléo and Gloria is made up of looks, caresses, complicity and warnings, a maternal and magnetic physicality that brings them closer to each other and builds a relationship brick by brick that slowly becomes stronger and more solid. The woman feels the desire and the duty to return to her children and at the same time is tried by the pain she feels for the separation from the child she has cared for for years and from what over time has become something more than a simple job full time. Her family has always been divided, just like her heart and we understand this better when she hosts Cléo in Cape Verde, a place where Gloria becomes the fulcrum of emotional ties dictated as much by her blood as by her heart.

In this purely intimate dimension the shots become narrower, the camera approaches the faces and bodies as if to caress them with touching tenderness. The viewer is allowed a delicate, never intrusive gaze on a precarious balance, on characters so well written that we don’t struggle to think they could be real, because the story told by Marie Amachoukeli (also screenwriter of the film) is as common as it is exceptional. In approaching the protagonists, the director always shows respect for her but at the same time, on several occasions, leaves the context out to put them at the center of the scene, to make manifest and reaffirm the point of view of the story.

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The animated inserts at the service of the characters

To offer greater support to the construction of the characters, animated fragments have been inserted which open a window on the soul and the past of the two protagonists. The graphic style with a strong pictorial flavor sends back dreamlike images and memories that transport the viewer into the mind of Gloria and Cléo. Fears, desires and the past come together in strong brushstrokes of color that are changeable and tumultuous like the human soul, marking the times of an essential, dry and balanced narration; a moving but devoid of piety story that reaffirms the excellent hand of its creator, a director with her own vision and her own precise style capable of making even small common stories immense.