Julianne Moore rings true in 'Gloria Bell'

This remake of a Chilean movie celebrates one woman's ability to stand alone.

By day, Gloria Bell works for an insurance company. At night, she likes to go dancing, maybe because crowded, throbbing dance clubs give her sense of being with others -- even though she's still alone. Gloria has two grown children and has been divorced for a dozen years. She's lonely but not enough to accept the company of a hairless cat that insists on finding its way into her apartment.

If all this sounds familiar, it's probably because you saw the 2013 Chilean movie Gloria, which was directed by Sebastian Lelio. Lelio has remade his movie with an American cast, substituting Julianne Moore for Paulina Garcia, the actress who played the title character in the original, which simply was called Gloria.

Lelio gives the title a surname and moves the story to Los Angeles, where Gloria Bell spends her time studying yoga, taking a shot at laugh therapy and trying to keep up the spirits of a work friend (Barbara Sukowa) who fears the pending loss of her job.

After Lelio introduces us to Gloria and gives a glimpse of her alienated life, he brings her together with a guy she meets at a club (John Turturro). Having been divorced for a year, Turturro’s Arnold seems like a great match for Gloria. He's considerate, has a fun job (he owns an amusement park where people play paintball) and makes a pleasing sexual partner.

Turturro gives a convincing performance as a man who wants to move forward but struggles to shed the heavy baggage of his former life, namely two needy adult daughters and an accident-prone ex-wife. Will Arnold wimp out or will he assert himself and develop a real relationship with Gloria?

The rest of the supporting cast doesn't get much attention. Michael Cera plays Gloria's son, a young man mired in a failing marriage, and Caren Pistorius portrays Gloria's daughter, a young woman who seems to have found true love with a big-wave surfer.

Lelio stages a painfully awkward scene when Gloria brings Arnold to a birthday dinner with her two kids, her former husband (Brad Garrett) and his new wife (Jeanne Tripplehorn). Things don't go well.

Look, even those who haven't seen the Chilean version will have guessed by now that the point isn't to provide Gloria with a happily-ever-after with a great partner. The script brings her to a point of self-assertion at which she no longer needs a partner. She’s able to dance on her own -- to Laura Branigan's familiar song, Gloria -- of course.

That makes Moore the movie's main attraction, and she's more than up to the task; she gives Gloria Bell soul as she builds toward the inevitable realization that cracks through the wall of Gloria's conflicts.

Add some comedy, and you've got a movie that dances to a beat you've heard before, but won't mind hearing again.

A big fight over a tiny house

Catherine Keener stars in a story about a Connecticut woman's battle to save her home.

The issue of eminent domain receives a modest work-out in Little Pink House, a real-life drama in which Catherine Keener portrays a paramedic who takes on powerful economic interests in order to retain ownership of her Connecticut home.

Keener plays Susette Kelo, a woman who works long and hard to buy a house overlooking the water at a spot where the Thames River meets the Long Island Sound. Kelo renovates the house, paints it pink and settles in for her own version of happily-ever-after.

For Susette, the Little Pink House is more than a place to live; it represents a dream fulfilled.

But the town of New London has other plans for Kelo's property. Spurred on by the state's governor, a non-profit development corporation led by a character named Charlotte Wells (Jeanne Tripplehorn) wants to develop the property in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood where Kelo and others have lived — some for most of their lives.

Tripplehorn’s Charlotte believes that development ultimately will help the town’s poorer residents. She mixes social and corporate concerns in hope that Pfizer — the drug company then on the verge of its Viagra boom — will select Kelo's neighborhood as a site for expansion. In Wells' version, the city wins. Pfizer wins. Everybody’s happy — except, of course, the homeowners who don’t want to move.

Eventually, a lawyer (Giacomo Baessato) who’s part of a non-profit group takes Susette’s case, pushing it all the way to the US Supreme Court. Kelo and cohorts lost the case. In a 2005 ruling, the court established that the city's plans did not violate public use clauses of either Connecticut or US law. Put another way, the court decided that economic interests can, in some cases, serve to benefit the public.

Keener makes Susette believably life-sized, although the movie diverges a bit to chronicle Susette’s romantic relationship with the local owner of a small business (Callum Keith Rennie).

I wondered if director Courtney Moorehead Balaker could have infused the movie with a little more outrage, fury springing from the clash of values that animates her film.

The point may not come as a shock but it's worth restating: New London's battle over real estate demonstrates that individuals face an uphill battle when it comes to fighting interests with big bucks behind them.

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*A footnote: The land at the heart of this battle reportedly still remains vacant. Pfizer went in another direction. In the end, it's appropriate to ask, did any of the movie's characters win anything?