I used to say if I ever had a kid it would happen in the way it happened to Gloria Swenson, in the Cassevettes film Gloria. I’d acquire the kid by some twist of fate — like a mob hit. However, my partner is a woman so when we our son was born it wasn’t exactly unplanned. Now my son is five and I’ve taken to saying he and I are like Gloria and the kid in Cassevettes film Gloria. The truth is, I hadn’t seen Gloria in ages. I recently rented it to take a look again at this film which had subconsciously become a metaphor for my baffling state of motherhood.
“I’d do anything for you. But I hate kids. Especially your kids,” says Gloria to her neighbor Jerri. Jerri and her husband are desperate for Gloria to take their six year old son Phil with her where he will be safe. The entire family has been marked because her husband, an accountant for the mob, had been talking to the FBI. The goons are closing in fast. Gloria, who had just stopped by because she was out of coffee, reluctantly takes Phil to her apartment. When inside she asks if he’d like to play with her goldfish.
Meanwhile the thugs do their job. Phil is orphaned and left with Gloria his sole protector. Gloria tosses her best Emanuel Ungaro outfits in a suitcase and tucks a loaded handgun into her purse. Together the unlikely pair hit the road. The rest of the film is a chase through the gritty streets of NYC. Gloria and Phil attempt to allude the mob by sleeping in fleabag hotels, and riding in hot buses, jumping grungy subways, and hailing banged up livery cabs (it’s 1980). The mob wants the boy who has father’s accounting book and they won’t stop until they get it and kill him. Gloria, a former girlfriend of a powerful kingpin, realizes this and she also knows how to wield her handgun. She quickly finds herself forced to gun down the mobsters who try to get the kid. I was right to reference this film. Gloria is a movie about that animal state otherwise known as motherhood.
Gloria, like all new moms, is just trying to figure it out as she goes along. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know what to do with you kid,” she says. And clearly, she doesn’t always know what she’s doing. Phil doesn’t eat, bathe or change clothes through the whole film. But, despite herself, she grows attached to the kid. She is fiercely protective of him. She’s inventive and resourceful in the ways she is able to keep him safe, even when he insults her, runs away from her, and even briefly and dangerously sides with one of the gangsters.
Gloria is an odd-ball mix of an urban mafia film, melodrama, and deadpan comedy. The scenario is preposterous but Gena Rowland’s Gloria is a convincingly tough and tenderhearted. She’s a classic, world-weary, quip-making New Yorker. Rowland’s performance prevents the film from drifting into easy parody. In unsparing close-up she calmly and gently reassures Phil that everything will be ok. A warm smile, radiates maternal assurance, though at the same time we can see in the slight strain around her eyes that she’s thinking — I’m not sure I can fucking do this.