Opening this week: ‘Ash Is Purest White,’ ‘Gloria Bell’

“Ash Is Purest White”

****

(Not rated, 2:16) In Shanxi dialect and Mandarin, with subtitles

“Ash Is Purest White,” Jia Zhangke’s enthralling new feature, isn’t really a crime drama, though it centers on the story of Qiao and Bin, who in the beginning are an underworld power couple in the Chinese industrial city of Datong. Bin is attacked by members of a rival gang, and Qiao (Zhao Tao, pictured) saves his life. Rather than rat him out, she accepts a five-year prison sentence, after which she goes looking for Bin.

Jia, who has long concerned himself with the impact of enormous social and economic forces on individuals, uses Qiao’s search as a way to explore the dislocation and alienation caused by the rapid changes taking place in modern China. Qiao takes a ferry down the Yangtze River, an area soon to be inundated by the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, and makes friends with a man bound for the outer province of Xinjiang. By the time she returns to Datong, in the present, the city is almost unrecognizable, reflecting Jia’s view that his world is in constant motion. His refusal to hurry through it can be understood as a reminder of the necessity of paying attention.

“Gloria Bell”

*** 1/2

(R, 1:42)

Julianne Moore is a knockout as the title character in this inspiring remake of the Spanish-language “Gloria.” Gloria Bell is a California insurance adjuster, compassionate mom, joyful dancer and party animal, but there’s an essential loneliness to her, a sense that she’s likely to be the one who calls her friends and her adult children, not the other way around. Driving alone in her car, she sings at the top of her lungs to hits from the late ’70s and early ’80s. We get the idea that Gloria is nostalgic for a time when she was happier, so much so that she pursues a new guy (John Turturro) though he may not be worthy of her. The most spectacular scene comes at a wedding, when Laura Branigan’s disco hit, “Gloria,” comes on and the title character, feeling a little down, reluctantly enters the dance floor. Then she remembers that she loves to dance, and she gives herself over to the beat with an abandon that reads to us as pure, unfiltered joy.