Observing life on a small scale

Ira Sachs's winning Little Men chronicles a boyhood friendship in Brooklyn.

Director Ira Sachs (Love is Strange) brings a gentle but knowing touch to Little Men, a story about two boys who become friends in Brooklyn.

That may sound like the basis for an achingly ordinary feel-good story, but Sachs's movie is fueled by issues as diverse as a father's failure to become the actor he hoped to be and a family's struggle with money issues -- not to mention the disruptive consequences of urban gentrification.

At the start of the movie, 13-year-old Jake (Theo Taplitz) moves from Manhattan to Brooklyn with his parents (Greg Kennear and Jennifer Ehle).

Dad's getting a bit long in the tooth for a performer who still works in the kind of small New York productions for which the actors aren't paid. Mom, a psychotherapist, supports the family.

Money being an obvious problem, the family is relieved to move into a Brooklyn apartment that Kenner's character inherits from his recently deceased father.

The apartment sits atop a store that comes with the building. The store is occupied by Leonor (Paulina Garcia of Chile's Gloria), a seamstress who never paid market value for her shop. Jake's aging father evidently welcomed Leonor's company, and adopted a casual attitude toward collecting the rent.

Pressed for money, Jake and his sister (Talia Balsam) believe they're justified in asking for a reasonable rent increase. Leonor thinks otherwise.

Leonor's tough-cookie recalcitrance is further complicated by the fact that Jake and Leonor's son (Michael Barbieri) become fast friends.

An infectiously likable kid who wants to be an actor, Barbieri's Antonio perfectly complements Jake's shyness. The friendship between Jake and Tony gives Sachs an opportunity to celebrate the freedom of city life for a couple of 13-year-olds.

Sachs and co-writer Mauricio Zacharias develop a carefully balanced drama that revels in the delights of boyhood, understands the psychological complexities of the adult relationships and isn't out to slam anyone ever the head.

Credit Sachs with taking us deep into the lives of people whose struggles may not be epic, but never feel anything less than real. In a time of unashamed movie preposterousness and bloat, Sachs's movie reminds us that observing life on a small scale beats not observing it at all.

Looking for love -- after 50

The Chilean film Gloria has plenty of verve

In the Chilean movie Gloria, actress Paulina Garcia wears over-sized glasses that may have the unfortunate effect of reminding American audiences of Dustin Hoffman's look in the gender-bending comedy Tootsie.

Safe to say that director Sebastian Leilo has something else in mind. The glasses, I think, have thematic significance. Despite the size of her glasses, Gloria -- a 50-something woman who has been divorced for more than a decade -- doesn't always see clearly, and we're not talking about her ability to read an eye chart.

It's a bit cliched to say, but Gloria spends too much time looking for love in all the wrong places. She bar-hops and goes to discos. When she's not immersing herself in Santiago's nightlife, she's at home in an apartment where she's tormented by a noisy neighbor who seems to be having a non-stop argument with himself. To make matters worse, the neighbor's hairless cat keeps wandering into Gloria's place.

Gloria isn't completely alone. She has grown children -- a son and a daughter -- but like most grown children, they're busy with their own lives.

The question of Gloria's vision (perhaps judgment might be a better word) comes into sharp focus when she meets Rodolfo (Sergio Hernandez), a retired Navy man who seems to want more than an evening's sexual release.

Rodolfo is also divorced, but he feels the tug of need from his two grown daughters and from an ex-wife who apparently won't let go. And perhaps Rodolfo doesn't want his daughters or his former spouse to let go. For all his complaining, he's obviously nourished by their dependancy.

Beyond domestic entanglements, Rodolfo's occupation suggests a certain immaturity. He runs a theme park where visitors can bungee jump or play paint ball.

Leilo should be commended for creating a portrait of an older single woman, and you can have fun speculating about how Hollywood might have treated the same subject -- presuming it even bothered with characters who carry lots of personal baggage with them as they age.

A scene in which Gloria invites Rodolfo to her son's birthday party (her former husband and his young wife also attend) shows that Rudolfo can't deal with outsider status. For their relationship to succeed, Gloria and Rodolfo must accept the fact that not all of their history can be shared.

I've seen the movie described as joyful, but that's not a word I'd use in connection with a film about a woman's attempts to battle loneliness. Garcia creates a vibrant chaacter whose persistence and liveliness keep the movie's wheels spinning, but Gloria has moments of despair that play against its comic thrust.

By the end of the film, we get the feeling that Gloria will persist -- even if if she has to go it alone. Still, there's a lingering question about whether she'll ever find the companionship for which she yearns.

Dance, in this case to a Spanish version of the disco song that may have given the movie's title character her name, becomes the operative metaphor for Gloria's ability to survive. Metaphorically, it's important to keep dancing. The question for Gloria -- and for everyone else, I suppose -- is how to keep dancing, even after the music stops.