An intimate masterpiece
Alfonso Cuaron’s new film brilliantly bridges past and present, poor and rich, good and bad
Roma will be tough to beat as the best film of 2018.
Mexican writer/director Alfonso Cuaron’s naturalistic masterpiece is at once a tribute to the women who raised him and a comment on turbulent times.
The film is as intimate as Cuaron’s early breakthrough Y Tu Mamá También, as expansive as his cosmic trip Gravity and as culturally fraught as his dystopian nightmare Children of Men. But it makes an impact all its own, with a detail-rich story of strength and compassion in the midst of inhumanity.
Set in the early 1970s, Roma is titled for and located in and around the Mexico City neighbourhood of Cuaron’s youth, where he was
raised from the age of 9 months by a nanny named Libo, to whom the film is dedicated.
Libo is recalled by lead character Cleo, an Indigenous maid and nanny played by first-time actor Yalitza Aparicio, a schoolteacher and former domestic worker who will not be forgotten during awards season — and neither will the film nor Cuaron’s many contributions to it, which also includes lustrous B&W cinematography.
Roma has a limited theatrical run before moving to Netflix on Dec. 14, but it demands to be seen on the big screen wherever possible.
Aparicio’s guileless Cleo brings freshness, empathy and a grounding reality to a story that at times seems utterly unreal, as in a scene that horrifically recreates the Corpus Christi massacre of June 1971, when Mexican army soldiers fired on student protesters, killing 120 people.
Roma invites us into Cleo’s busy life and also that of her harried boss Sofia (Marina de Tavira), a biochemist, teacher and mother.
Divided by class, the two women are linked by misfor- tune; they’ll soon discover they cannot depend on the men in their lives and will have to rely on each other.
It might be better to say that the film pulls us into the lives of these women, who seem constantly in motion. They live on a street alive with the cacophony of cars and pedestrians, but also the sweet melodies of caged birds, a love song on the radio and the whistle of a door-todoor knife sharpener.
We meet Cleo first, as she’s scrubbing the tiled driveway of the iron-gated home of Sofía, her doctor husband Antonio (Fernando Grediaga) and their four pre-teen children. The maid labours to remove the copious deposits left by Borras, the family’s pampered pet pooch.
Sofia is also dealing with an unpleasant leaving. Antonio, who drives an American car as big as his ego, is taking off on a business trip that sounds more like a pleasure one.
Angry words are exchanged; more are to come in a marriage that is clearly under stress. Cleo will soon have reason to doubt the veracity of her own arrogant significant other: her boyfriend Fermin (Jorge Antonio Guerrero), who seems to like martial arts more than he does her.
An early scene has the family’s youngest son, Pepe (Marco Graf), feigning to be dead, with Cleo playfully joining him. Pepe, 5, and his brother Paco (Carlos Peralta), 11, have been pretending to shoot each other with invisible bullets.
Paco tells of a story he heard from a friend, about what happened to a kid who threw a wa- ter balloon at soldiers.
It’s a significant scene and visual in a film of threats both imagined and real — but also genuine acts of love and courage.
Perhaps the most telling image of all is the repeated sight of a jet plane passing overhead, at one point reflected in the soapy water from Cleo’s bucket.
The aircraft reminds us that these are modern times. Yet errant human behaviour can make existence seem almost medieval for women in Cleo’s and Sofía’s situations.
Roma brilliantly bridges past and present, poor and rich, good times and bad.
Yaliitza Aparicio’s Cleo brings freshness, empathy and grounding to a story that at times seems utterly unreal