‘Roma’ gives Netflix big Oscar buzz
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NEW YORK – “Roma,” ooh-la-la. While audiences have been weeping over Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s bad romance in “A Star Is Born,” another tear-jerker has emerged as the movie to beat this awards season: “Roma,” Netflix’s black-and-white, Spanish-language gamble, which has been breathlessly hailed as a masterpiece since it debuted at the Venice Film Festival.
The understated yet gutwrenching drama, which has sterling reviews (99 percent positive) on Rotten Tomatoes, charts a year in the life of Cleo (newcomer Yalitza Aparicio), a live-in maid for a middle-class family in 1970s Mexico City.
Already in theaters in New York and Los Angeles, the film expands to additional cities Thursday before arriving Dec. 14 on Netflix, which hopes it’ll be the streaming service’s first major Oscar victory. (On awards site GoldDerby.com, experts unanimously predict “Roma” will earn a best-picture nomination.)
The warm reception “has been a beautiful surprise,” says writer/di- rector Alfonso Cuaron, returning to the Oscar race after 2013’s “Gravity,” for which he won best director. “What has been amazing has been the emotional response to the film. It just shows that the human experience is one and the same.”
But selling general moviegoers on a slow-burning, subtitled period piece will be an uphill battle, and Netflix’s refusal to release streaming and box-office numbers makes it tough to truly gauge “Roma’s” success. But if you’re still on the fence about watching, Cuaron, 57, shares a comprehensive guide to everything you should know before diving in.
1The film is inspired by Cuaron’s childhood nanny.
“Roma” chronicles the joyous highs and devastating lows of Cleo as she helps raise her boss Sofia’s (Marina de Tavira) four young children. Cleo is modeled on Cuaron’s real-life nanny, Liboria “Libo” Rodríguez, a dark-skinned, indigenous woman who joined his family when he was 9 months old and was fundamental in his early upbringing. (They remain close today.)
As Cuaron grew older, “I started realizing the contradiction that exists, in which one member of my family comes from a different social and ethnic background,” he says. “It took the process of making this film to deeply recognize her as a woman... in a world in which race and class are completely interlinked.”
2He relied on memory, rather than research, to write it.
The filmmaker based the screenplay primarily on his own recollections, but also his conversations with Libo.
“It was written almost like a stream of consciousness,” Cuaron says. “I just kept digging and digging, assuming that I’m not telling the truth of things as they happened, but how I remember them.”
3None of the actors knew what they were shooting until they got to the set.
His approach was similarly loose during filming: Cuaron mostly tried to cast actors who looked like the people he remembered growing up, and didn’t give them scripts for scenes until the day of shooting.
To make the movie seem natural and authentic, “I would talk to (the actors) and stage scenes separately, not as a group – whispering different instructions to them, most of them contradicting each other,” Cuaron says. “I was waiting for chaos and accidents to happen. I had never done that (on a film).”
4The lead is played by a first-time actress.
Oaxaca native Aparicio, 24, won out over more than 3,000 women who auditioned to play Cleo. Then studying to become a preschool teacher, she went to a casting call on a whim with her pregnant sister, who wound up backing out last minute. Aparicio took her place and submitted an audition tape, which entailed answering personal questions rather than reading scripted dialogue.
“I was just interested in hearing them talking, like, who you are, what (do) you like, what are your dreams,” Cuaron says. “When I saw (Aparicio), I was like, ‘Wow, she’s so perfect.’ She has an amazing softness combined with an amazing smile, but what is behind all of that stuff is an immense intelligence.”
5If you watch “Roma” on Netflix, stick with it.
“Roma” was shot on crisp 65mm black-and-white film and uses state-ofthe-art surround sound, creating a rich visual and aural experience that’s best enjoyed in a theater on the biggest screen possible. But for those who view it at home, Cuaron recommends turning up the sound and switching off the TV’s motion-smoothing, a default setting on many new models that is most often used for video games and watching sports.
Most importantly, “I ask that you give ‘Roma’ a little bit of time,” Cuaron says. “And if you give yourself time to immerse yourself in it, you’ll pass very quickly through the filtering of language and black and white, and those elements will actually strengthen your experience.”