Directing her first solo feature film after winning a Caméra d’Or along with co-directors Claire Burger and Samuel Theis for Party Girl (2014), French filmmaker Marie Amachoukeli brings an uncanny sensitivity to a difficult topic in Ama Gloria. A popular festival title following its Cannes debut, where it opened the Critics’ Week, this story of a little girl who has lost her mother just screened in Sundance’s Spotlight section.
Amachoukeli’s Ama Gloria is told from the perspective of six-year-old Cléo who, after her mother’s death, finds love and comfort in her relationship with her caretaker, an immigrant who has left her own children behind in her native Cape Verde. Cape Verdean actor Ilça Moreno Zego plays her nanny Gloria with great believability. She demonstrates her love for Cléo, playing with her, comforting and guiding her with a gentle touch. Cléo’s widowed father (Arnaud Rebotini) appears only briefly but movingly, showing his paternal concern and indulgence of his only child
In the role of Cléo, young Louise Mauroy-Panzani is superb as a mischievous, adorable little girl, fearless in her play and passionate in her affections. She is also near-sighted, and we first see her while an optometrist’ fits her for new glasses. The director tells the story in close-ups for most of the film, to convey the child’s point of view and her narrow focus on the world around her. This can feel a bit suffocating for the viewer, who may crave a wider perspective on events and locations.
The use of first-time and non-professional actors gives the film an authenticity and immediacy that more seasoned performers may not have delivered. Secondary characters like fishermen and construction workers also bring authenticity to their parts. Maurov-Panzani is wholly convincing in the main role, and never verges into sentimentality, keeping a brave demeanor even when she bursts into tears. We follow her learning curve, facing hard lessons about love and loss, how to cope with the absence of her beloved “àma” Gloria and come to terms with the death of her biological mother.
Gloria, who has children of her own back home, is much more than a nanny to Cléo. The term “nanny” does not fully explain the role of substitute mother, which the Portuguese “àma” or “amã” conveys; it can also mean to love, nurse, mentor. The director was inspired by her own experience growing up with a Portuguese nanny, who left her to start a new life in her home country; their affection for each other survives time and distance to this day.
The Cape Verde location adds a layer of drama and meaning to the film as we see another side to Gloria, as a hotel entrepreneur, in her home country, with skills beyond those of a nanny or mother. We also understand the emotional toll that distance inflicts on “long-distance” mothers and their biological children, raised by their grandmothers or other relatives, inevitably awakening resentment and mistrust. Among Gloria’s children, young César (Fredy Gomes Tavares) is particularly good at representing these complex feelings of estrangement, need, and reproach towards his absentee mother. The story transitions from Cesar’s jealousy to Cléo’s, as the chain of hurt feelings continues when Cleo confronts the birth of Gloria’s first grandchild and realizes the baby’s needs will displace her own.
Amachoukeli’s own family had to relocate from Georgia to France when she was a child, and she draws on those experiences to paint a subtle and profound portrait of her characters. She has an eye for details that are more effective than words: Cléo’s tiny, bare feet on top of her father’s shoes as he teaches her to dance; or her friends’ hands against the bus window in a farewell scene. Sound also conveys early memories: the lullaby that Gloria sings, Cléo’s first words in a new language, the ancient invocations offered to saints and gods to protect a newborn. Subtle music blends into the soundtrack, where crashing ocean waves, laughter, sobbing, and eloquent silences alternate. The use of animation is effective and beautifully rendered in watercolors, as we follow Cléo’s discovery of new feelings and distant landscapes, or her sense of anguish in a dramatic underwater sequence.
Director, screenwriter: Marie Amachoukeli
Cast: Louise Mauroy-Panzani, Ilça Moreno Zego, Abnara Gomes Varela, Fredy Gomes Tavares, Arnaud Rebotini, Domingos Borges Almeida
Producer: Bénédicte Couvreur, Lilies Films
Cinematography: Inès Tabarin
Editing: Suzana PedroAnimation: Marie Amachoukeli & Pierre-Emmanuel Lyet
Sound: Yolande Decarsin, Fanny Martin, Daniel Sobrino
Music: Fanny Martin
Production companies: Canal +,Ciné + TV5 Monde, ARTE/COFINOVA 18 & Cinecap 6, La Procirep
World sales: Pyramide International
Venue: Sundance Film Festival (Spotlight)
In French, Cape Verdean Portuguese, Creole
84 minutes