A passionate Chilean romance

This Spanish- speaker shows there is no age limit on love nor the attendant passion in the boudoir. A relationship movie for and about matures that brush off the barnacles and chase further mates as a cure for loneliness.

Gloria is a 58- year- old happy divorcee not ready to hang about in her flat being sad with only her neighbour’s goofy rat- tailed cat for company.

So she dons her warpaint and high heels and heads off to a nightclub awaiting a tap on the shoulder from a bunch of smooth Gloria M, 1hr 50min Reviewed by Peter Lampp Chilean senors.

Gloria is portrayed by Paulina Garcia, little known outside Chile, who won best actress at Berlin. Gloria’s latter- day man interest is Rodolfo, played by Chilean actor Sergio Hernandez who has been in 60 Spanish- language films and is a little long in the tooth for Gloria.

Garcia’s performance, though, is every bit as good as that of Dame Judi Dench’s in Philomena. But being Chilean, Garcia can never be a dame and Gloria has not spent on TV promotion as Philomena has.

The lead characters’ love- making saw both actors bravely displaying their wares in the absolute nuddy for the first time.

Without giving the game away, let’s just say some divorcees come with secondhand baggage. But you’d still expect any male suitor worth his testosterone would turn his cellphone firmly off.

The movie follows the ups and downs of their romance. Gloria and her latent lust for the 65- year- old former naval officer makes her forgive too easily when things get bumpy.

Not a film for the kids who struggle with golden oldies going at it, it is enjoyably art- house, mostly filmed indoors and takes a long meander to get to the point.

But you have to sympathise with Gloria with the bulging glasses, who seems a normal woman seeking romance and not frightened to hit the top shelf, try a snort or puff away on infernal fags. A classy film which Chile rightly nominated for the foreign film Oscars.