Superficially based on John Cassavetes's Gloria (1980), in which Gena Rowlands goes on the run with an orphaned boy, Zonca's first English-language foray is a far bleaker affair in which Tilda Swinton, as a train wreck of an alcoholic, hijacks a fellow AA attendee's scheme to kidnap her own son and swerves off to Mexico in a haze, never managing to think more than one step ahead. It's apparent early on that Julia's entirely at the mercy of fate since few redeeming characteristics are displayed that might point towards growth and through it, salvation. What we get instead is a future impossible to foretell, which works to sustain the narrative momentum on its predictably downward trajectory.Zonca's strategy is a risky one: the film revolves around a character who's virtually impossible to sympathise with. Besides Julia's complete inability to see the bigger picture, she's perpetually inventing swathes of fabrication, more for her own benefit than to those she's addressing, like an outwardly destructive Blanche DuBois, and any gloss of morality plays second fiddle to her hunger. But Tilda Swinton imbues her with so much humanity expressed through desperation and intellectual scorn that it just about holds together.
6/10
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