Gloria and Léon (The prostitute and the hitman) 

There is a film I saw some time ago that is considered a cult classic and is one of my favourites. I am talking about "Léon: The Professional" (1994), but more recently I have seen films older than this one (especially one) and they have reminded me how interesting this film is and how fascinating these classic films are, which seem to have served as inspiration for "Léon".

It begins with Leon going about his work routine. He is in an Italian restaurant waiting for instructions…

LÉON: A professional and methodical hitman.

TONY: The owner of an Italian restaurant.

The opening scenes, with extreme close-ups, almost force us to focus all our attention on the conversation between these characters. The aroma of garlic, tomato and spices permeates the atmosphere. Wooden tables, checkered tablecloths and bottles of wine decorate the place...

Leon is sitting at one of the tables, drinking a glass full of milk. He is wearing his typical trench coat, balaclava (a hat that resembles a "solideo...") and dark glasses.

Tony, a burly, affable man with a sauce-stained apron, approaches Leone's table, clutching a cigarette between his lips that fills the air with smoke, giving the scene that particular noir-nostalgic atmosphere.

TONY: Hello, hello, como estáis (how are you)? Leone...

LÉON: bene (fine).

TONY: Good, very good. Let's get down to business. That gordo cabrón is trying to take over Maurizio's business. You know Maurizio is a reasonable guy, he just wants to have a little chat, but that guy isn't up for it. Maybe he'll listen to you…

—And without further ado, the action begins...

If we think about it reasonably, we should not empathise in any way or feel any flash of understanding for a hired killer... For God's sake, he is a HITMAN!
Of course, this conclusion is based on the narratives we are accustomed to, such as the stories of 'heroes and villains' in much of literature, cinema and television, with quasi-perfect characters with an impeccable moral code (such as Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible) or ladies of unbreakable integrity and immaculate innocence (such as Jean Louise "Scout" Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird), flat characters with little or no depth or complexity, based on basic narratives of good versus evil, which shapes our understanding of conflict and morality. Despite all of the above, as soon as the film begins, it doesn't take long for us to fall in love with Jean Reno's totally reprehensible character (Léon) and Natalie Portman's vulnerable rebelliousness (Matilda).

The film "The Professional" (known in some places as "Léon: The Professional" or "The Perfect Assassin"), released on 14 September 1994 in France, written and directed by Luc Besson, is set in New York City. More specifically, in the neighbourhood of Little Italy, where Leon, an Italian-American hitman, takes Mathilda (Natalie Portman), a twelve-year-old girl, under his protection after her family is massacred by a group of corrupt agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) led by agent Norman Stansfield (Gary Oldman).

Mathilda is a 12-year-old girl who is abused by her parents, deeply loves her younger brother, dresses like an adult, and smokes cigarettes in secret.

Léon is a solitary man with an imperturbable appearance who, in private, behaves like an innocent child who just wants to drink his milk in peace.

Mathilda, sitting in the hallway in front of the building's staircase railing with her legs dangling, asks her neighbour Léon:

…Is life always this hard, or is it only hard when you're a child?

LÉON: It's always hard.

Their friendship is an oasis of kindness in the midst of a chaotic world. A pair of characters who want to learn to sing and dance in the rain.

It's Always Fair Weather (1955) features an incredible dance number in which Gene Kelly tap dances effortlessly on roller skates. It is the film that Leon watches during a break from his routine at the cinema.

The film is full of memorable scenes, the most famous being those featuring the villain who steals the show with the unbridled madness that Gary Oldman brought to the role with his magnificent performance full of improvisation... But among so many, there is one that I would like to highlight for its dramatic impact and symbolism, because it is one that frees us, as viewers, from one of the worst moments of tension: After her family was massacred by DEA police officers, Matilda continues walking down the hallway without stopping in her apartment, danger and tension floating in the air mixed with the smell of rust from the blood and gunpowder from the bullets. When she reaches the door, she begs her neighbour Leon to open it. Seconds pass that seem like an eternity as we watch the desperation of that girl, trying to imagine what is going through her mind. And Léon, behind the door, whom we already know to be very confident in his actions, now appears hesitant and nervous. Perhaps wanting to care for or save someone's life is a little more complicated than trying to take it away.

The camera zooms in on Natalie Portman's face, where the actress manages to show all the character's feelings at that moment. That emotional avalanche is overshadowed by her face, her face overshadowed when, finally, after making us suffer for what feels like 50 eternal milliseconds, Leon is seen as the light inside the apartment when he opens the door, illuminating her face as if to show that Léon is a small light in the midst of so much darkness. Poetry, yes, I know what you're thinking: "is cinema".

Something noteworthy about this director is his respect for animals. In his latest film, Dogman, (2023) the nobility of animals takes centre stage, and Luc Besson's professionalism is evident in this quality.

What hurt Mathilda the most about the massacre, in her own words, was the death of her 4-year-old brother, and the character utters the following line:

"...I was more of a mother to him than that damn filthy pig!" (Referring to her stepmother)

Hey! ‘—Léone’ replies— Don't talk like that about pigs, they're nicer than people, .

Old films that dare to feature unlikely protagonists (former prostitute; Gloria and hitman; León) and chaotic (poverty) and realistic (common crime and corruption) settings.

Here I want to digress for a moment to mention several films that I believe served as inspiration for this one, or rather that I drew heavily from. This is particularly apt given that the central theme is women and they focus more on a type of motherhood that breaks with convention: "Central Station of Brazil", "Pixote", "La Luna", but the one I think is most similar is Gloria... Making another aside within the aside, there are a couple of references that are more obvious and that many people talk about: one is Nikita 1990, by the same director, in which a disoriented young woman is trained to be a perfect assassin. They have obvious similarities: they share the same director, and Jean Reno also acts in it. The other is Lolita, but for me it is the least similar; I think this story goes in a different direction. In Lolita, Humbert Humbert is a nasty guy with twisted ideas who, as the narrator of the story, tries to come out looking good, but his weakness for nymphets, as he calls them, '—a weakness he himself acknowledges—' has nothing to do with the protagonist of this story, who ends up involved with this girl due to a fortuitous and extraordinary circumstance.

Returning to “Gloria”, this is a 1980 film written and directed by John Cassavetes . It starred Gena Rowlands and John Adams in the leading roles. The film tells the story of Gloria, the ex-girlfriend of a gangster, ex-prostitute and ex-cabaret dancer, who lives in the same apartment building as Phil, a young Puerto Rican boy who is orphaned after the mafia massacres his entire family. Because of this, she is forced to protect and help the boy escape, as he is being hunted for a notebook containing information about mafia affairs that his father gave him.

When I saw this film recently, several years after seeing Léon: The Professional, I immediately remembered it. Because the story is similar, except that the roles are reversed: instead of a man looking after a girl, it is a woman looking after a boy from a gang of gangsters, who becomes so fond of this woman that in one scene he says to her:

"Do you want to be my mother? Then you're my mother, you're my father, you're my whole family, you're even my friend Gloria, you're also my girlfriend." He tells her that he can be everything to her. Because he really wants her to be everything to him. This scene is very powerful and moving, because what else is a mother but everything to a child?

Rowlands' performance earned her her second Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

It is refreshing to watch a film from another era with a different visual language, as if you were visiting a museum with colourful displays, the sound of trumpets and electrifying saxophones, different camera angles, different lighting and, above all, a naturalness that is lacking in today's productions.

It is not a film with big action scenes or dazzling performances, but it has something that many current films do not have, and that at some point in history they have lost: it has personality, scenes that start from such a powerful idea that in the end the technique takes a back seat and almost doesn't matter.
Films that break the mould where there are pre-established rules, play with provoking your mind, disrupting your moralistic ideas.

One curious detail that I cannot overlook is that Léon adopted the Yautja (Predators) "Code of Honour," which (generally) does not allow them to attack women or children. Well, there are slight differences, but for Léon, he is an honourable opponent for a Yautja.

Motherhood is that desire to be everything to someone else.

When Léon is with Matilda, he ceases to be that dangerous guy, although aware of the dangerous world around them, in many moments he seems like just a sensible child who drinks his milk before his nap, during which he snores like a baby, even if he doesn't want to accept it. And Mathilda ceases to be a child and becomes the one in charge of the household chores, adopting maternal attitudes.

The relationship between Gloria and Phil, or between Léon and Mathilda, is one in which each person has nothing and no one, and the other is all they have left.

Change and other terrifying ideas

Another symbolism present in all these films is that of transformation, exploring concepts such as growing up, changing, evolving, and death itself symbolises all of this. In Gloria, the film ends in a cemetery and Gloria is disguised as an old woman when she introduces herself to the boy, saying, "I'm your grandmother" (yet another role). In The Professional, transformation is also present, not only in the deaths that are commonplace in an action film, but also in other details such as Mathilda's favourite programme being the animated series "TheTransformers" (1984), or the plant that goes from a pot to a park, or when they play the role-playing game of becoming something they are not, as well as that childhood dream of already being an adult, of being something different from just a child, while at the same time the desire is also a fear of something terrifying: being in a body that one does not want to be in. An adult trapped in the body of a child or an older woman like a diva, who wants to return to the best moments of her youth while living the twilight of a star.

In order to change, you have to kill something in yourself. You stop being who you were yesterday.

One of the reasons why these films are so appealing is because they shake things up and make you see things from a different perspective, far from the conventional.

Luc Besson is said to be the most Americanised European director, but if this is true, I think Léon is the least Americanised film of all because of the way it seeks to scrutinise human nature rather than being daring and provocative; by disrupting dichotomous formulas for understanding reality, exposing taboos and, above all, the fear of human desire.

He is a director who challenges our society's habit of replacing what is right with what is wanted or desired. That judgemental, critical gaze of a bitter old woman peering out of the window, criticising the lives of others for what she wants to do and never did.

We can be strong even when life is hard. We can also find good people, sometimes in the most unexpected places, and put down roots.
We can't be everything we want to be, but we can try to be many things. That's why identity politics is so absurd, because it ties you to a single form and limits your freedom. This is also what the role-playing scene tells us when we see Léon acting like John Wayne or Mathilda acting like Gene Kelly.

Towards the end, he has to convince her that they have to separate in order to escape. He manages to convince her to save his life again with the following sentence:

"You won't lose me, Matilda. I want to be happy, sleep in a bed, put down roots… ¡You'll never be alone again!"

This sentence is directly related to the deleted scene that failed to break down the wall of political correctness. That scene is as follows:

The soundtrack, featuring accordions, violins, and piano, complements the scenes by conveying just the right emotion at precisely the right moments, like a perfectly synchronised dance between image and sound. And I can't leave without mentioning the icing on the cake: Sting's song Shape of My Heart, which brings this well-rounded film (which needs no sequels or remakes) to a close.

I accept that I am sentimental and prefer the ending of Gloria (without detracting from that of The Professional...), which, yes, okay, is fine; they are in a cemetery, as if to remind us that death is present and the happy ending is not eternal. But Cassavetes leaves us with the beautiful image of love between a child and a woman.