This Gloria could only be a singer-songwriter's film! film debut of Margherita Vicario, daughter of an artist and established Italian singer-songwriter born in 1988. 

The new director builds Gloria! about sounds. Each gesture produces a noise which, with the right rhythm, becomes music (in some passages this technique recalls that of Lars Von Trier in Dancer in the dark) until the insertion of actual songs in a more brazen and direct way. Little by little the opera transforms from a costume film to a musical.

This style gives Gloria! vitality and rhythm, characteristics that are actually often too far from our own cinema. Vicario's direction does not fail to accompany us into the meanders of a cellar where only the music of a rediscovered piano gives hope to the orphan protagonists. Historically not flawless and a plot that is more like a fairy tale than a documentary, Gloria! a feminist revisionism that is too fashionable today pays off. It seems that after Cortellesi's There's Still Tomorrow, the key to bringing the public closer to the big screen is that of unfortunately simplistic feminism. And to say that the screenplay seems to be inspired by a rigorous novel like Stabat Mater by Tiziano Scarpa.

The female ensemble cast is interesting and spares no effort and has the right faces that are credible. Courage in male roles with Paolo Rossi and Elio who draw serious characters.

Passed into competition at the last Berlin Film Festival Gloria! It's a debut that, although not convincing, especially due to the screenplay and a really fake ending, gives us hope because Vicario still seems to have a more modern and lively vision of cinema than average. We'll see.