Gina Rowlands has emerged as one of our finest actresses. Witness the diversity of her performances in Minnie and Moskowitz, A Woman Under the Influence, and in the TV movies "A Question of Love" and "Strangers: The story of a Mother and Daughter." In this film by her husband John Cassavetes, she is a survivor with a sordid past in the world of crime. Her reclusive life in a lower-middle-class uptown apartment in New York City is interrupted when her neighbor Jack Dawn (Buck Henry), a bookkeeper for the syndicate, sends his six-year-old Puerto Rican son Phil (John Adames) to her just before the mob assassinates the rest of the family. Jack had talked to the FBI about the operations of organized crime.
Gloria has little use for children, and Phil has been tutored by his father in the Latin macho ethic. They make a strange pair. He calls her a "stupid person" and a "pig." By morning, they are running from Gloria's former associates who track them down one hotel to another. The action is brisk, and the tension is nonstop.
Even more involving is the developing relationship between Gloria and Phi, who are compelled by circumstances to become "family." Gloria's feisty spirit is incredible, especially when she visits the head of the syndicate (who was once her lover). She tries to exchange Jack's account book for Phil's life. No dice. Several friends of the hoods she has killed wait in the corridors outside.
Cassavetes uses the city of New York very well, and Fred Schuler's cinematography capitalizes on a variety of locations. But it is Gena Rowland's affecting performance which makes Gloria such a treat. Here is a heroine who is both tough and tender, both shrewd and caring. And her blunt-edged humor is a survival tactic that works.
