USA TODAY US Edition

Director boosts Oscar chances for ‘Roma’

- Patrick Ryan

NEW YORK – “Roma” is one of the very best films you’re likely to see this year. But how far can it go in a jam-packed 2019 Oscar race?

That’s the question awards prognostic­ators have been asking since the movie premiered at the Venice Internatio­nal Film Festival in August and brought audiences to their feet at the Toronto and Telluride fests before landing at the New York Film Festival over the weekend.

On paper, “Roma” has almost everything working against it: For starters, it’s a black-and-white, Spanish-language drama with English subtitles. The twohour-plus film has no recognizab­le stars in the United States and charts a year in the life of a live-in maid named Cleo (played by Yalitza Aparicio, a first-time actress), who works for an upper-middle-class family in 1970s Mexico. It will be released Dec. 14 in select theaters and on Netflix.

But “Roma” has a silver bullet in Alfonso Cuaron, the visionary filmmaker behind 2013’s “Gravity,” whose credits also include “Children of Men,” “Y Tu Mama Tambien” and “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.” Cuaron, 56, has long been beloved by critics and industry peers as one of Hollywood’s “Three Amigos” along with fellow Mexican directors Alejandro G. Inarritu (“Birdman”) and Guillermo del Toro (“The Shape of Water”). Cuaron has described “Roma” as his most deeply personal film yet, developed from his memories growing up in Mexico City and based on his childhood baby sitter.

“We were a family together,” Cuaron has said of the woman who inspired Cleo. “When you grow up with someone you love, you don’t discuss their identity. ... I forced myself to see as this woman, a member of the lower classes, from the indigenous population. ... This gave me a point of view I had never had before.”

There was not a dry eye in the house by the end of the film’s screening at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall Saturday afternoon, which was introduced by surprise guest del Toro in Cuaron’s absence.

“‘Roma’ is, for me, the culminatio­n of Alfonso’s career so far,” del Toro said. “I said to him: ‘This is not only your best movie, it’s one of my top five (favorite) movies of all time. But don’t get big-headed – it’s No. 5.’ ”

 ?? CARLOS SOMONTE ?? “Roma” will be released Dec. 14 in select theaters and on Netflix.
CARLOS SOMONTE “Roma” will be released Dec. 14 in select theaters and on Netflix.

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