Written by: Alfonso Cuarón
Starring: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Fernando Grediaga, Jorge Antonio Guerrero
Rating: [5/5]
Finding the people who truly care for you comes with a life filled with trials and tribulations involved with taking the risk to be vulnerable. A place where you open yourself up to pain but know it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. The vulnerability etching every scene of Roma marks something deeply personal for the filmmaker but also beautifully moving in how it brings us into the life of one woman and the range of events she experiences.
Working for a wealthy family in Mexico City, a live-in maid, Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) navigates her daily duties as she sees the family she serves disintegrating right before her. At the same time she must contend with her own issues when she learns her most recent sexual encounter has resulted in a pregnancy.
Not many films had built up such a level of expectation for me prior to me viewing it. This feature ushered in the return of Alfonso Cuarón after nearly a decade with something so deeply personal and to no surprise what we receive somehow exceeded those lofty expectations by a wide margin. Certainly not something easy to do but so much occurs in what can be described as a film displaying elements of the mundanity of a woman’s life. These events happen as she exists in the background and become even more impactful when she steps into the foreground. It all culminates into something unforgettable and one of the greatest films of the 21st century.
Opening with the water slushing through a floor in the act of cleaning as the credits roll, this feature immediately introduces us to the life of Cleo. She carries the responsibility of making sure everything in the house remains clean and orderly, which includes the dog excrement somehow ever-present in the entryway of the home. Cleo must do it all while having her own personal battles but she remains a dutiful worker. With all the cleaning she must do, she cannot work with the mess happening before her with the family employing her. Seemingly one anyone would dream about but then becomes a nightmare when the family suffers a split threatening to ruin it all. This leaves her powerless to do anything about it much like other instances in her life.
Cuarón’s camera placement in the way he captures Cleo during these sequences in the house has this level of objectivity in it not coming from her perspective. It moves back and forth much like an oscillating fan as it shows everything she must do, the things she must take care of, and the timely manner in which all must get done. Outside the house, the camera movement becomes much more dynamic and demonstrates what makes Cuarón such a riveting filmmaker. The way he creates these impeccable sequences of tension and high emotion without breaking from what truly matters on the screen makes for some incredible scenes. Thinking of instances like the furniture store or the delivery room had me holding my breath for what gets captured and how we stay with Cleo for all of it. Harrowing stuff in how the camera captures the beauty, horror, and sadness on display.
All of this gets aided by the impeccable cinematography of Cuarón himself. Doing double duty on the visual side here, he creates several impeccable shots to truly make these moments stand out even more and drive the point home. The most famous of them undoubtedly the beach scene where they all embrace really marks a stunning sequence in the way the lighting of the sun wraps around these characters to accentuate their figures compared to their backdrop. On so many occasions this film can be paused to just soak in the sheer beauty on display further displaying how much this movie exists as a complete masterwork for Cuarón.
As Cleo navigates her different spaces which include the domestic and her personal life, she effortlessly jumps between speaking in Spanish and Mixtec depending on the receiver of her words. This most obviously occurs when speaking with Adela (Nancy García), her friend and maid in charge of cooking for the same family. They live such a different existence as compared to their employers which allows the change of scenery for Cleo to have a more strident appearance in areas where she can find the most comfort in her personality. It also demonstrates the diversity of language existent in a major city like Mexico City and the sort of jobs these individuals with indigenous roots typically fall into. It also highlights particularly smart and incisive writing utilized in this feature to show cultural imprints stand out including the expected Latina mother concern Sofia (Marina de Tavira) has in her daughter’s weight laid out in some throwaway sentences. This also gets displayed in the weirdly unfair adoration Latina grandmothers and mothers have for the boys compared to the girls. Nothing about it jumps out at you unless you have lived through this culture and know exactly what those little moments represent making for such a rich textual observation of these characters.
With Cleo serving as the central figure of the story, delving into all of the areas where she navigates informs her relationships. From the father of her child to the streets of Mexico City. However, the most impactful tether existent in the feature occurs between Cleo and the family she works with. Through the scenes and interactions held between her and each of the kids, the mother Sofia, and the father Antonio (Fernando Grediaga). Moments of sweetness, anger, sadness, pain, catharsis, and love all occur throughout her interactions with the family as they serve as the people who truly care for her. They mean so much to her while she exists as the glue keeping them together through this tumultuous time. A symbiotic relationship where each side desperately needs the other. It’s what makes the scene at the beach all that much more impactful and allows for the emotionally climactic moments to hit even harder.
Very patient but emotionally profound, Roma feels like a complete journey for Cleo in what she experiences and must witness during this stretch of time in her life. She goes through a whole spectrum of emotions and it all gets captured by the legendary Alfonso Cuarón. He shares the story of someone he deeply cared for in his own upbringing and in the process allows for small details about the past in Mexico City to peek out and make for such an enriching and moving feature film. Simply astounding by every single metric and filled with so much love and affection that will overwhelm you in the best of ways.
Films with Josh 
