A Mexican wave worth catching . . .
Alfonso Cuaron’s award-winning, semiautobiographical, spanish-language film is set in Mexico City — where there is an area called roma — at the turn of the seventies.
It is meticulously observed and beautifully shot, in black and white, and although there are those who think it over-praised and, at twoand-a-quarter hours, rather too long, the film held me pretty much spellbound from beginning to (admittedly rather distant) end.
It is the story of a middle-class family, based on Cuaron’s own, which relies to a very large extent on an impassive but devoted maid, Cleo (first-time actress Yalitza aparicio).
The family is stricken by marital break-up at about the time Cleo, too, suffers from personal difficulties.
really, roma tells the story of how their experiences intersect. It has feminist themes — the fecklessness of fathers is a recurring storyline — and possibly the most powerful childbirth scene I’ve ever seen in the cinema, but in a way, it is less like a film than the classiest imaginable feature-length soap opera.
It’s an episodic, slice-of-life drama in which huge, seismic events (literally, in the case of an earthquake, but also a forest fire, a violent student demonstration, a riptide horror) are subsumed by the importance to ordinary people of their ordinary, everyday tribulations.
I saw it at this year’s Venice film festival, where it won the main prize,
the coveted Golden lion. Cuaron was there on the night I went, and at the end the audience gave him a 20-minute standing ovation, gazing adoringly at him as he conspicuously wondered where to put himself.
I predict more of the same at next year’s academy awards. n Surviving Christmas With The
Relatives also tries to tell the story of a middle-class family teetering on the edge of calamity, but as a comedy, in the English countryside, in a shabby, leaky old house, at Yuletide.
alas, it is itself something of a calamity, a witless distillation of all the worst sitcoms you’ve ever seen. Cliches include a parking ticket on Christmas Eve, a turkey called Gobbles that doesn’t want to be caught, a vicar with halitosis, and a haughty sister visiting from america with her unlovely family.
Joely richardson, Patricia Hodge and Gemma Whelan (from Game of Thrones) at least bring a lick of class, but it’s desperate fare.
Roma (15) Verdict: Golden Lion winner ★★★★★ Surviving Christmas With The Relatives (15) Verdict: First turkey of the season