Earning her second Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, Gena Rowlands stars as tough gangster’s moll Gloria Swenson, a blonde Bogart in heels who suddenly finds herself responsible for a seven-year-old Puerto Rican boy named Phil (John Adames) after his family is murdered by his father’s mobster associates. When the killers come back for the boy, Phil and a gun-packing Gloria take it on the lam. Downplaying genre conventions to create an almost fairy-tale feel, Gloria memorably etches the tempestuous relationship between its two main characters: a woman who neither likes nor understands children, and a boy who is forced to play the role of a man. Shot on vividly seedy locations in NYC and New Jersey, Gloria is Cassavetes’ most successful attempt to make a “commercial picture,” but also maintains the distinctive voice and atmosphere of his more personal films. “Gloria is going to surprise a lot of people who think they know what a John Cassavetes movie is or ought to be” (David Ansen, Newsweek); “Rowlands propels the action with appealing, nervous energy . . . Gloria is tough, sweet and goofy” (Roger Ebert).