Gloria!

It is embarrassing how this piece of grotesque mixing invokes a historical basis and at the same time portrays nothing other than immaturity. It is irritating that Swiss television has signed up for such a bunglingly distorted emancipatory self-portrayal. What does the movie actually want to be? The backdrop is set around the Rennaisance, the musical passages are either jazz or swing, then jump just as confusingly back into baroque classical music as the language jumps into modern times... Nothing is coherent or gives the impression that a professional has done his job here. Piecemeal, choppy, crude pieces that elevate even Theodor Fontane's "Effie Briest" to the status of a masterpiece. - "Gloria!", a movie that should have been intensively reworked by professional writers in the early stages of the script. So bad and compulsively radically emancipatory. 2 stars for costumes; best thing I could say.

In cinematographic terms, the production has quality. The photography, the location settings, the costumes, the period instruments. And at first glance, the screening I attended seemed to have promise. But then, somewhere in the middle, it started to give a hint of ridiculousness. Okay, here we are in in the early years of the 1800s, and suddenly we have a miraculous nascent of a human spirit, a mute that can play a complex musical instrument, and best of all, can play jazzy Glen Miller-like tunes? And when the fellow woman that is writing up thoughts in rime, and needs a musical assist in reciting those phrases, is that hip-hop? Or actually, it was more like Gianna Giannini, the star pop singer in modern Italy. Oh yeah, the final concert scene, what thoughts did it trigger? It was more like the sonoric revolution on opening day of Stravinsky "Rite of Spring", but here presented as a revolution and separation from patriarchal dominance, and liberation of a sisterhood, then setting themselves free to travel into the world, moving through the Swiss Alps in a caravan. Sisterhood, Thelma & Louise, but in the Venetian lagoon in 1804. I would recommend this film only to music lovers of period string instruments and musical history. Otherwise, it veered into silliness. Whoever gave money to produce it, it was to "give voices to women", "empower women", "break the patriarchy". But all at a cost of making an unrealistic flick, a fantasy, actually. Cheers.