Cuaron’s Mexican ‘masterpiece’ wins Venice festival top prize
MEXICAN DIRECTOR ALFONSO Cuaron won the Golden Lion top prize at the Venice film festival Saturday for Roma, which critics called not merely a movie but “a vision”.
With its highly emotional story centred on an indigenous maid working for a middle-class family in Mexico City in 1971, it has been hailed as Cuaron’s most personal film - and also his best.
Cuaron told reporters that in an incredible coincidence “today is the birthday of Libo, the woman the movie is based on. What a present!”
The film industry bible Variety said Roma is likely to go down as a “masterpiece”.
“It is no mere movie - it’s a vision... where every image and every emotion is perfectly set in place,” said critic Owen Gleiberman. Cuaron “dunks us, moment by moment, image by luminously composed image, into a panorama of the hurly-burly of Mexico City.”
The Italian press declared it “sublime” while for The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw it was a “complete triumph”. Venice has become the launchpad for the Oscars race with Hollywood heavyweights jostling for attention in a line-up director Alberto Barbera called “the best in 30 years”.
Cuaron, 56, reconstructed his childhood home for the Netflix-backed film, borrowing furniture back from relatives to recreate how it was when he was 10. But the heart of the film is the “luminous” performance of first-time actor Yalitza Aparicio, who plays Cleo, a young live-in maid of Mixteco heritage who looked after the director as a boy. “Cleo is based on my babysitter when I was young. We were a family together,” Cuaron said. “But when you grow up with someone you love you don’t discuss their identity. So for this film I was forced to see myself as this woman, a member of the lower classes, from the indigenous population. This is a point of view I had never had before.”
It is no mere movie - it’s a vision... where every image and every emotion is perfectly set in place.” Owen Gleiberman