Roma (2018): Cuaron Comes Home

Roma is the eagerly awaited and critically acclaimed new film from Alfonso Cuaron – the writer-director of such films as Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001), Children of Men (2006), and Gravity (2013). He was also the director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third – and some have argued the best – in that mighty, coming-of-age wizard fantasy series. Well, Roma is different than all of these – it’s a muted, yet powerful, autobiographical drama, filmed in black and white to emphasize the retrospective nature of the story. It is about a critical year in the director’s childhood, but in a twist which I find fascinating, the protagonist of the film is not Cuaron himself or a screen facsimile, but rather the family’s housekeeper/nanny, who seems to be the one person holding it all together for the family. Cuaron not only wrote and directed, he was also the cinematographer and film editor. Unlike some of Cuaron’s commercial hits, clearly this one is personal.

Roma is named for Colonia Roma, the middle-class district in Mexico City where Cuaron grew up and where much of the action takes place. It’s late 1970, and the world is turning upside down. There is political unrest with leftists protesting and right-wing fanatics rioting and fighting them in the streets.  Within the family, there is turmoil and drama as well.

The family consists of the mother, Sofia (Marina de Tavira), the father, Dr. Antonio (Fernando Grediaga), four children - ranging in age from about 5 or 6 to about 12 or 13, the children’s grandmother/Sofia’s mother (Verónica Garcia), a cook (Nancy Garcia), the aforementioned house-servant, Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), and a dog. Unlike other autobiographical recollections, the narrative gives no clues as to which of the children is supposed to be young Cuaron, and it has become a parlor game for some of those who have seen the movie to try and guess which it might be; but it really doesn’t matter.

In some respects, Roma resembles some other retrospective films like Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), Terence Davies’ classic remembrance of his family and life in working-class Liverpool during the post-war years; or Amarcord (1973), Federico Fellini’s lightly fictionalized, satirical and carnivalesque portrait of life in his home town during the Mussolini era before the Second World War. Like those pictures, Roma is clearly a fond evocation of a specific time and place and rooted in the director’s own childhood memory and experience.  Indeed, Cuaron went to great lengths to construct an interior set that precisely mirrored the home in which he was raised. But while the attitude of the film is empathetic and the story is based on personal reminiscence, the tone is neither mawkishly sentimental nor decidedly nostalgic. Nor, as I’ve suggested, is it a Bildungsroman about Cuaron himself, although it might be said to be a coming-of-age tale about his family. Mostly, though, the story is about and from the perspective of the domestic worker Cleo.

The character of Cleo is based on a real person, Libo Rodriguez, who worked for Cuaron’s family for several decades. The movie is an homage or as another reviewer, Guy Lodge, has put it, a kind of belated valentine to Libo; and in fact, Cuaron dedicated the movie to her. Cleo is an indigenous Mexican native, while the family is clearly of European ancestry. She is far less educated or sophisticated than her employers - in fact, it seems she is largely illiterate - and although her Spanish is okay, Cleo’s first language is Mixtec, spoken in the hardscrabble, rural districts to the South where she’s from. The movie opens with Cleo cleaning up messes, and we subsequently observe her straightening up the house, doing the laundry, serving meals, gently getting the children up in the morning, lovingly putting them to bed at night, and so on. All without resentment or complaint. She  is by nature reticent, even with her one friend, Adela, the cook; which may be why, although Cleo is so clearly indispensable, she is largely taken for granted by the family – at least at first. During the course of Roma, as we come to know Cleo and the crosses she has to bear, we too come to appreciate her; and along with Cuaron’s family, we come to love her as well. Yalitza Aparicio is so good in the role, it’s hard to believe this is her first picture.

Early on, Antonio (the father) leaves – supposedly to go to a conference but intending, as it turns out, to abandon his wife and family. Sofia now must take the reins of the family, with little to no financial or other assistance from her wayward husband; she increasingly must rely on her mother and, especially, on Cleo to care for the children, while she goes back to work. Even so, it is a struggle to hold it together. Cleo soon has her own crisis and some emotionally devastating losses to deal with, leading to one of the most heartbreaking cinematic scenes anywhere this year.

Meanwhile, political tumult and violence are in the air and on the streets, pitting left-wing students against right wing militias. The family tries to ignore these events, but in such times, is anyone safe? 

Much of this is pretty serious stuff, but there are some light moments as well. For example, a recurring motif concerns the family’s hyper energetic dog who resides, for the most part, in the home’s gated driveway-carpark; accordingly, its floor is frequently dotted with piles of dog shit. The repeated images of this are both amusing – as family members need to dance around it to get to the car or out to the street – and emblematic, as one of Cleo’s jobs is to clean up the crap and one of Antonio’s many gripes about family life is the minefield of doo-doo he must traverse every time he arrives or departs. When he exits for good, Antonio leaves behind his late-model Ford Galaxy, a behemoth status symbol that with meticulous maneuvering he can just barely squeeze into the poop-littered space. After he’s gone, the task is too much for Sofia, who simply plunges in regardless of the mangled mess she makes of the car's bodywork.

There are some remarkably warm moments too, such as a scene when the family all gather together to watch a sit-com on their tv, even Cleo (briefly, until she is required to get up to serve beverages to everyone). One of the most touching scenes in the picture features a grateful, cathartic group embrace following the terrifyingly beautiful climactic scene of the movie.

Although there are a few taut and even thrilling scenes, the overall pace of the movie – or more precisely, the pace of the narrative - is measured and unhurried. The plot is often secondary to the exquisite and sometimes stunning black and white photography and to the detailed exposition of the family’s and Cleo’s life in the big house, especially in the first half. The story also gives way at times to Cuaron’s examination of the broader themes of the picture – the class system and resultant cultural-political conflict, the fallout from rapid urbanization and modernization, and the place of women in a male-dominated culture. At one point, a drunken Sofia ruefully confides to Cleo, “Remember this: a woman is always alone.” In so doing, she highlights and cements one of several parallels developed along the way.

When I first saw Roma at Telluride, I drifted off a few times due, I think, more to my own fatigue that afternoon than the pacing of the picture. Afterwards, most everyone else in attendance, my spouse included, was enthusing about how fabulous the film was. A month or so later, I took advantage of an opportunity to attend another advance screening, and I have to say, I liked it a whole lot better the second time.

Meticulously composed, beautifully photographed and acted, emotionally resonant, Roma is a serious, distinctive movie, acclaimed by many critics as a masterpiece and one of the best movies of the year. It is one I wound up liking and admiring quite a lot,  and I recommend it quite highly.

Although Roma is available on Netflix, if you have the chance to see it in a movie theater (see below), I’d encourage you to take that opportunity, in part because it will be easier to read the subtitles (it’s in Spanish and Mixtec) but mostly so as to fully appreciate the beautiful photography.


Two hours fifteen minutes

Grade: A-

Produced by Netflix, Roma was released on their streaming service on December 14, 2018, and is concurrently playing on the big screen in select movie theaters.