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Alfonso Cuaron ’s “Roma” opens with a close-up shot of a stone-paved driveway. We see soapy water cascade over the rock, as someone off-camera is cleaning it. In the reflection of the water, we can see the sky, although even that reflection undulates and changes as the water moves. A plane then moves across the field of view within the reflection. It sounds so simple but there is so much in this sequence of images that is reflected in the film to follow: a natural flow of life—water, stone, air—while also presenting us with the concept of the micro within the macro, like a plane against the sky. So much of “Roma” repeats that concept of the personal story against a backdrop of a larger one—the face in the crowd, the human story in the context of a societal one. Cuaron has made his most personal film to date, and the blend of the humane and the artistic within nearly every scene is breathtaking. It’s a masterful achievement in filmmaking as an empathy machine, a way for us to spend time in a place, in an era, and with characters we never would otherwise. 

The woman cleaning that driveway is Cleo ( Yalitza Aparicio ), a servant for a wealthy family in Mexico City in the ‘70s. Cleo is no mere maid, often feeling like she is a part of the family she serves more than an employee—although she is often reminded of the latter fact as well. She may go on trips with them and truly love the children, but she also gets admonished for leaving her light on too late at night as it wastes electricity. Cleo is a quiet young woman, eager to do a good job, and able to stay out of the way when controversy arrives within the family, especially with the distant, often-absent patriarch.

Everything changes for Cleo after an affair with a cousin of her friend’s boyfriend results in a pregnancy. Cleo’s employers offer to help their favorite servant with the pregnancy, taking her to the doctor and supporting her with whatever she needs, but the child’s father disappears, and Cleo looks worried about what her future holds. “Roma” spends roughly a year in the life of Cleo as she plans for motherhood, tries to support a family that is coming apart, and simply moves through a loud, changing world.

Cuaron, who shot the film in gorgeous black-and-white himself (and clearly learned a thing or two from regular collaborator Emmanuel Lubezki ), adopts a fascinating visual style for “Roma” in that he rarely uses close-ups, keeping us at a distance from Cleo and his other characters, and allowing the details of the world around them to come to life. Without over-using the trick, which would have resulted in a cluttered film, Cuaron often places Cleo in a tableau that could be called chaotic, whether it’s a market teeming with people behind her or even just the home in which she spends so much of her time, full of noisy children, relatives, and servants. Cleo’s existence is a crowded one, and it almost feels like it gets more so as the film goes along, mirroring her increasing concern at the impending birth of her child. With some of the most striking imagery of the year, "Roma" often blends the surreal and the relatable into one memorable image.

Throughout “Roma,” Cuaron uses his mastery of visual language to convey mood and character in ways his mostly-silent protagonist cannot. There is no score, and yet “Roma” feels aurally alive, largely because of the veracity of Cuaron’s attention to detail. There’s a tendency for filmmakers who attempt to make something that could be called “poetic” to get loose with detail. The idea is that poetic cinema can’t be realistic cinema. What’s so stunning about “Roma” is how much Cuaron finds the poetry in the detail (this is also true of Barry Jenkins' "If Beale Street Could Talk," one of the other great movies of 2018). The film is remarkably episodic—so much so that its lack of driving narrative may disappoint people when they watch it on Netflix—but it’s designed to immerse you, to transport you, and those who go with it will find themselves rewarded. Cuaron’s film climaxes in a couple of emotional scenes that will shake to the core those who care about these characters. 

Cuaron has said that this film is a tribute to the women in his life and “the elements that forged me.” With that obviously personal angle driving the production, “Roma” often plays out like a memory, but not in a gauzy, dreamlike way we so often see from bad filmmaking. Every choice has been carefully considered—that wide-angle approach allows for so much background detail—and yet “Roma” is never sterile or overly precious with its choices. It’s that balance of truth and art that is so breathtaking, making Cuaron’s personal story a piece of work that ultimately registers as personal to us, too. And you walk out transformed, feeling like you just experienced something more than merely watching a film. That kind of movie is incredibly rare—we’re lucky if get one a year. “Roma” is that special.

I don’t often get as personal as some critics do in reviews, but how strongly I feel about this film seems to warrant one more closing thought. By virtue of being blessed to work here, I’m often asked what I think Roger Ebert would have thought about some of the films that have been released since he passed. It’s emotionally overwhelming to consider what he might have written about “ Moonlight ” or “ Selma ” and so I try not to go down that mental rabbit hole, but I felt that absence perhaps most greatly while watching “Roma.” When it ended, I thought more than ever about how he would have written about it. I think that’s because it so completely embodies what he considered the role of great cinema as an empathy machine. We should be thankful there are films like “Roma” keeping that machine humming.

This review was originally filed from the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11th.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film credits.

Roma (2018)

135 minutes

Yalitza Aparicio as Cleo

Marina de Tavira as Sra. Sofía

Diego Cortina Autrey as Toño

Carlos Peralta as Paco

Marco Graf as Pepe

Daniela Demesa as Sofi

• Alfonso Cuarón

Cinematographer

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There’s a Voice Missing in Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma”

Even noteworthy filmmakers may not see what they’re doing. They can reveal crucial aspects of their work inadvertently, bringing to light the cinematic unconscious, hinting at what a movie could and should have been. That’s what Alfonso Cuarón, the writer and director of “Roma,” did in an interview for a recent magazine article. Set in Mexico City in 1970-71, “Roma” depicts a family much like the one in which he was raised and is centered on a domestic worker, both maid and nanny, named Cleo Gutiérrez (Yalitza Aparicio); the character, Cuarón has said, is based on a woman named Libo Rodríguez, who played a similar role in his childhood (and to whom the movie is dedicated).

In the article , the journalist Kristopher Tapley conveys the substance of Cuarón’s inspiration for “Roma”: “Rodríguez would talk to Cuarón about her hardships as a girl, about feeling cold or hungry. But as a little boy, he would look at those stories almost like adventures. She would tell him about her father, who used to play an ancient Mesoamerican ballgame that’s almost lost to the ages now, or about witch doctors who would try to cure people in her village. To him it was all very exciting.”

Watching “Roma,” one awaits such illuminating details about Cleo’s life outside of her employer’s family, and such a generously forthcoming and personal relationship between Cleo and the children in her care. There’s nothing of this sort in the movie; Cleo hardly speaks more than a sentence or two at a time and says nothing at all about life in her village, her childhood, her family. She’s a loving and caring young woman, and the warmth of her feelings for the family she works for—and theirs for her—is apparent throughout. But Cleo remains a cipher; her interests and experiences—her inner life—remain inaccessible to Cuarón. He not only fails to imagine who the character of Cleo is but fails to include the specifics of who Libo was for him when he was a child.

In the process, he turns the character of Cleo into a stereotype that’s all too common in movies made by upper-middle-class and intellectual filmmakers about working people: a strong, silent, long-enduring, and all-tolerating type, deprived of discourse, a silent angel whose inability or unwillingness to express herself is held up as a mark of her stoic virtue. (It’s endemic to the cinema and even leaves its scars on better movies than “Roma,” including some others from this year, such as “ Leave No Trace ” and “ The Rider .”) The silent nobility of the working poor takes its place in a demagogic circle of virtue sharing that links filmmakers (who, if they offer working people a chance to speak, do so only in order to look askance at them, as happens in “Roma” with one talkative but villainous poor man) with their art-house audiences, who are similarly pleased to share in the exaltation of heroes who do manual labor without having to look closely or deeply at elements of their heroes’ lives that don’t elicit either praise or pity.

That effacement of Cleo’s character, her reduction to a bland and blank trope that burnishes the director’s conscience while smothering her consciousness and his own, is the essential and crucial failure of “Roma.” It sets the tone for the movie’s aesthetic and hollows it out, reducing Cuarón’s worthwhile intentions and evident passions to vain gestures.

“Roma” is the story of a family in Mexico City’s Colonia Roma neighborhood (where Cuarón grew up): father, Antonio (Fernando Grediaga), a doctor; mother, Sofía (Marina de Tavira), a biochemist who is running the household and not working; grandmother, Teresa (Verónica García), who is Sofía’s mother; and four children (a girl and three boys), ranging, seemingly, from about six to about twelve. And then there’s the household staff, Cleo and Adela (Nancy García García); there’s also a man who drives the family car, but he is utterly uncharacterized.

The youngest child, Pepe (Marco Graf), an imaginative boy who talks about being a pilot, seems to be the Cuarón stand-in, though the movie isn’t dramatized from his point of view. (I’ll avoid disclosing some major plot developments.) The family is solidly upper middle class; they live in a house separated from the city street by a gate and divided from neighboring houses by an alley, in which they park their cars (and in which the family dog, Borras, runs loose and defecates). Antonio, who claims to be heading to Quebec for a temporary research project, actually remains in Mexico City, simply having left his wife and family in order to live with another woman.

Meanwhile, Cleo, quiet and patient, has her own romantic dreams: she’s dating Fermín (Jorge Antonio Guerrero), a cousin of Adela’s boyfriend, Ramón, and becomes pregnant. The family sympathizes with her; Cleo continues to work for them and receives good medical care, thanks to the family’s connection to a major urban hospital. But trouble ensues when Cleo goes on a shopping trip with Teresa, during a day of student protests; they know that such protests have been violently repressed, but this time the violence is worse than before, and Cleo and Teresa observe it up close. (Cuarón is dramatizing an actual historic crisis, the Corpus Christi Massacre , of 1971, in which soldiers and paramilitaries gunned down student protesters in the streets of Mexico City and pursued them into their hiding places and refuges, including hospitals.)

Cuarón expands the story with copious, carefully observed—rather, carefully constructed and planted—details that, for the most part, rather than developing a wide-ranging and deep-reaching view of the life of the family and its times, lines them up and points them all in the same direction. But, because his view of Cleo is willfully, cavalierly vague, his view of the public and historical events in which she becomes entangled, and which he dramatizes, is similarly flattened and obscured.

For instance, when Cleo learns that she’s pregnant, she’s seen sitting pensively at the window of the small garret room that she shares with Adela. Does she give any thought to abortion? What was the law on the subject in Mexico at the time? Was the practice common, regardless of legal strictures? Or consider the political context that Cuarón places into the story. There’s an ongoing issue regarding land use and ownership; the family’s wealthy friends living on a large estate are in a dispute with poorer local residents over land, and the conflict turns deadly. What are the issues in question? It’s all the odder that the movie remains vague when Adela mentions that Cleo’s mother’s land, in her native village, is being confiscated. What were the specifics of the political conflicts in Mexico then?

Cuarón sets up the story of the Corpus Christi Massacre with a close view of the training of the paramilitaries (with a hint—but only a hint—of the C.I.A.’s involvement). Yet here, too, he empties the conflict of its ideas. What are the students protesting? What are they advocating? Why do they seem to threaten the regime? In a scene of a political campaign (a rather absurd one, featuring a human cannonball launched into a net) in a distant village, where unpaved streets are fetid with standing water and basic infrastructure is the Presidential candidate’s main promise, Cuarón suggests that Mexico was, at the time, at least a semblance of a democracy. But the film doesn’t make clear whether it was actually democratic, whether censorship was stringent, whether ordinary people, such as the family at the center of the film, lived in fear of repression.

What’s missing is, once more, supplied by Cuarón in an interview—one that appeared in Le Monde several days ago—in which he discusses the massacre and its place in his family’s life: “At the time of the Corpus Christi massacre, in 1971, I was ten years old. Part of my family was very much on the right, they hated the students who were protesting. But I had a Communist uncle. I repeated to him the rightist remarks that I was hearing and he asked me why I talked that way about the students and got me to realize that I was one of them, at the age of ten. I said to myself: I’m like them, except they’re older.” Which is to say that, although the specifics of Mexico’s political crises were a part of his family life and personal reminiscences, Cuarón carefully omits them from the film.

Cuarón doesn’t have any more to say in “Roma” about whether Cleo has any political sympathies, inclinations, or ideologies. She is not only angelic but devoid of any wider consciousness beyond her immediate well-being. In the film, politics are strictly personal, de-ideologized, dehistoricized. Cuarón even manages to empty out the social abrasions that he drops into the script as asides. For instance, in one brief scene at the cousins’ country estate, Cleo is brought by another domestic worker, named Benita (Clementina Guadarrama), to a New Year’s Eve party of fellow-laborers. But Benita doesn’t want to invite Adela, one of the “city nannies” whom she considers haughty and snobbish—yet there’s nothing of this attitude, or these social differences, reflected in Cleo’s interactions with Adela, who’s her close friend. But, because neither Cleo nor Adela is given the script space to say much at all beyond the immediate demands of the plot, neither has enough dramatic personality to grate on anyone at all.

The film’s point of view isn’t clear regarding its characters—and Cuarón’s decorative visual style is calibrated to match the script’s vagueness. “Roma” is filmed in a silky, digital black-and-white palette that, in eliminating film grain, emphasizes visual details. There are many long takes, staged with a theatrical precision—rehearsed to death and timed to the moment—that offer a sense of disparate fields of action unifying in the characters’ lives, and that raise the events to a heroic monumentality, which both emphasizes and depends on the cipherlike blankness of the aggrandizing portraiture. For all the movie’s respect for physical work, nearly all the scenes of work, of which there are many, have a detached, distanced imprecision, which suggests the checking-off of a scene list rather that an interest in the specific thoughts and demands of the work at hand. (There is, however, one extraordinary moment of observation, when Cleo, holding a downstairs phone until Sofía can take the call upstairs, hangs the phone up—but not before wiping the mouthpiece on her apron.)

The intellectual core of the drama is the parallel of Cleo and Sofía’s abandonment by the men in their lives. Both Antonio and Fermín behave irresponsibly and leave the two women in dire straits; the movie offers one moment, one line of dialogue, in which their plights are explicitly linked—and it’s Sofía who delivers the line, to which Cleo listens mutely. Does she speak of her experience (and Sofía’s) to Adela or another friend or relative? Not in the movie she doesn’t; Cuarón lends both voice and consciousness to his intellectual character, to the stand-in for his mother.

“Roma” is a personal film, but the term “personal” is no honorific, and it’s not an aesthetic term. It’s a neutral descriptor, though it often suggests that a filmmaker is inspired by more than the mere pleasure or power of a story—by an urgency that taps into a lifetime’s worth of experience and emotion. The downside is the risk of complacency, the sense that one’s own account of experience is sufficient for dramatic amplitude, psychological insight, character development, and contextual perspective. Cuarón proceeds as if the mere affectionate and compassionate depiction of a Libo-like character were a sufficient cinematic gesture in lieu of dramatic particulars—and as if lending the entire range of characters their individualizing and contextualizing traits would risk viewers’ judgment of them on the basis of those particulars rather than on the basis of the social function of class, gender, and age that they’re supposed to represent. In his effort to make his characters universal, he makes them neutral and generic. For all its worthy intentions, “Roma” is little more than the righteous affirmation of good intentions.

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Roma, from celebrated director Alfonso Cuarón, is one of the year’s best movies

Now streaming on Netflix, it’s a meticulous, striking story of domestic life set against social unrest in 1970s Mexico.

by Alissa Wilkinson

A great movie is never just about its story. It’s about how that story is told, and particularly how it’s seen by the audience.

The best filmmakers know how to subtly guide our gaze toward what matters and hold it there, beckoning us to see what we might otherwise miss. In other words, great movies make us pay attention in a way that we often fail to do in our everyday lives.

That’s what Alfonso Cuarón does in Roma , and it’s with a mission. The film is personal for the director, who modeled its main character, Cleo, on a woman who worked for his family and raised him. The love for her that he brings to the screen, and the care and respect he pays her as the center of the film, is unmissable.

And in making Roma so visually rich and compelling, Cuarón is asking us to pay her the same respect — to slow our hearts, set aside expectations, and let the film speak for itself. Roma is a feast, crafted for those who are willing to pull up a chair and take part on the feast’s own terms.

In many ways, Roma is a natural evolution of Cuarón’s body of work

Cuarón’s career is diverse and celebrated; after his 1991 debut, the Mexican film Sólo con Tu Pareja , he quickly migrated to movies that proved to have broad audience and critical appeal: A Little Princess (1995), Great Expectations (1998), Y Tu Mamá También (2001), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004, widely considered the best of the Harry Potter adaptations), Children of Men (2006), and Gravity (2013). He’s worked on documentary and TV projects as well, and has been showered with awards , including two Oscars and four more nominations.

In all his films, Cuarón exhibits a careful attention not just to the narrative aspects of his storytelling but to how that storytelling is shaped by what the camera sees. Often, he works with legendary Mexican cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (the two have known each other since they were teenagers ), and the results are frequently unforgettable. Think of the heightened magical realism of A Little Princess , the extraordinary long takes in the painfully relevant Children of Men , or the weightless vertigo feeling of watching Gravity .

Roma feels both like the culmination of his career to date and something quite different. That is in part because, though Lubezki and Cuarón had planned to collaborate once again, scheduling problems led Lubezki to encourage his friend to not just write and direct the film but serve as its cinematographer as well.

The results are stunning. Shot in black and white and set around 1971, Roma — named for the Mexico City neighborhood in which Cuarón was raised — begins with a long, unmoving shot from above. The camera locks on a stone driveway as water is splashed across it, then a broom is pushed back and forth, washing the stones. The opening credits appear superimposed on this background, and it doesn’t change till they’re finished rolling.

Soon we find out the broom is pushed by Cleo (newcomer Yalitza Aparicio), who works for a well-off doctor (Fernando Grediaga), his wife Sofia (Marina de Tavira), her mother Teresa (Verónica García), and their four young children in Mexico City. Cleo lives in a room above the garage with Adela (Nancy García García), the family’s other domestic employee. The doctor is about to go on a work trip, and Sofia seems worried about whether he even intends to return. The children are rambunctious and full of questions, and the house bustles with life from dawn, when Cleo awakens the children, until dusk, when she turns off the last few lights.

Roma is about daily life against a backdrop of social unrest, and the women who keep it all together

Every bit of the house and the world around it is rendered in exquisite detail, and quietly; there’s no soundtrack to Roma , but the impeccable sound design puts you right into every scene. Often, Cuarón positions the camera in the center of a room and lets it rotate slowly, tracking with Cleo as she moves about the house, which is bursting with books and art and furniture and decorations that sketch out the life of the family.

It is not, strictly speaking, Cleo’s world — the divide between her roots in a poor village miles away and the family’s comfortable life are always starkly present. Even the way the characters talk underlines this fact; with the family, Cleo and Adela speak Spanish, but between themselves, they speak an indigenous dialect of Mixteca, from their home village. (The switches between the two are delineated in the onscreen captions for English speakers.)

But the subject of the movie isn’t the class contrast alone. Instead, it’s the way the domestic and the social collide, the way individuals’ lives play out in quotidian ways against the backdrop of much bigger happenings.

Those happenings include social unrest, whispered conversations about land grabs, fires mysteriously appearing on a wealthy hacienda at Christmas, and the 1971 Corpus Christi massacre , when a shock group trained by the government attacked student demonstrators.

It would reveal too much about the story of Roma to describe how those events become part of Cleo’s world, but the film keeps her in the foreground even when Cuarón aims to show us what’s going on in the world outside the family’s home. (The mind boggles at the idea of staging these scenes, and how many extras were required.) The objects that fill her field of view often fill the screen too: a piece of broken pottery, a candle on the floor, the children’s toys scattered on the floor, the water she scrubs across the stones.

With Cleo at its center, Roma ’s story takes on a meditative tone. Aparicio had never acted before this film, but she had worked as a domestic employee, as had her mother and other female relatives. That personal history is something she’s talked about in interviews,explaining that she drew on her lived experience when portraying Cleo’s life.

Often, Aparicio and Roma ’s other cast members wouldn’t receive scripts from Cuarón until a day or so ahead of shooting, so they were discovering their characters in real time, and it shows in the authenticity of their emotions. If you’re not paying attention, Cleo could appear passive. But there is plenty happening below the surface, most often revealed by Aparicio’s expressive eyes.

Roma is at times quite funny, always in a way that builds out its world more richly (a recurring gag with a car that’s barely able to get into the driveway turns into something more substantial later in the film). But it’s also a serious drama with aching scenes of loss, and one that places women at the center of the world, amid men who are often so carried away by passion or ego that they are essentially useless, or worse.

And given how closely Cuarón modeled Roma on his memories, the film thus serves as a testament to the women who raised him and populated his world. While all these frightening things were going on in the larger country around them, they kept on, choosing to rebuild after tragedies, raising children, sustaining a sense of wonder.

One of the best things a movie can do is force us to settle down, quiet ourselves, and live inside someone else’s experience for a while. And Roma is a shining example of a film that succeeds in that endeavor, focusing on the primary element that sets cinema apart from other artistic mediums: It is visually immersive and richly textured both in its visuals and its sound.

That’s why, even though Roma was produced by Netflix and will begin streaming on the platform just three weeks after its theatrical release, the film is worth seeing in a movie theater if it’s playing near you. There’s something particularly absorbing about the seemingly endless detail layered into the film — and giving it as much attention as you can respects not just the art form but the people at its heart, and the love Cuarón bears for them too.

Roma opens in select theaters in Los Angeles, New York, and Mexico on November 21 and will gradually roll out in the US and abroad in the weeks following. It also premieres on Netflix on December 14.

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‘Roma’ Review: Alfonso Cuaron’s Riveting Drama Is His Best Movie Since ‘Y Tu Mama Tambien’

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[Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2018 Venice Film Festival.]

“ Roma ” is the rare movie in no hurry to reveal what it’s about. Alfonso Cuarón ’s first project in his native Mexico since “Y Tu Mamá También,” “Roma” has more in common with that movie’s character-based storytelling than any of the bigger productions he’s made since; it also exhibits a mastery unique to his command of the medium. The bittersweet tale of a housemaid in a middle-class neighborhood of Mexico City in the early ’70s, “Roma” channels Cuarón’s memories of his upbringing into a ravishing, meditative, black-and-white saga that mines its bittersweet story from the inside out.

At its center, Cleo (remarkable newcomer Yalitza Aparicio) works for a well-to-do family headed by Dr. Antonio (Fernando Grediaga) and his energetic wife Sofía (a scene-stealing Marina de Tavira) along with their four kids (Cuaron based the youngest of the unit on himself). A descendant of indigenous Mesoamerican tribes (the movie includes both Spanish and Mixtec dialogue), Cleo has a comfortable routine as an extended member of the family. When the kids gather to watch television in the evening, she’s right there with them, a kind presence enmeshed in their daily life and able to live one of her own.

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Along with fellow houseworker Adela (Nancy García Garcia), Cleo enjoys an active social life, and even a romance with buff martial arts stud Fermín (Jorge Antonio Guerrero), who exhibits his talents to her in the nude during one of the movie’s earliest memorable scenes. Under the sheets, Cleo watches the demonstration in silence; as with a lot of the movie, she simply absorbs the energies of those around her, uncertain how to respond on her own.

For much of the first hour, the drama is slight; Cleo inhabits a stable world of cooking, cleaning, and childcare in a supportive environment. And then, Cleo faces a health crisis and doesn’t know how to proceed as her relationship goes south. Fernando leaves the family for a mysterious business trip to Quebec, while Sofía grapples with marital problems that she attempts to hide from her children, even as Cleo picks up clues of a mounting crisis.

Cuaron gradually tips this intimate struggle into a bigger canvas. At one point, an earthquake shakes the walls of a building, hinting at the possibility that this cozy existence could crash down at any moment. There’s a keen metaphor here for cultural and political challenges around the bend, but Cuarón never overplays his hand.

“Roma” assembles its narrative out of small moments, as the director’s camera pans slowly through various scenes to soak in the distinctive locale, while dispensing tidbits of story details from unlikely places. (It begs for multiple viewings, which could make the controversial decision for Cuarón to release the movie on Netflix actually a godsend, even though it deserves a big screen.)

Thanks to Cuarón’s own remarkable 65mm cinematography, it feels as if the filmmaker is writing his memoirs with moving images, yielding a hypnotic effect closer in style to the muted aesthetic of Argentine auteur Lucrecia Martel, or Chantal Akerman’s “Jeanne Dielman.” Cuarón’s “Roma” is by far the most experimental storytelling in a career filled with audacious (and frequently excessive) gimmicks. Here, he tables the showiness of “Children of Men” and “Gravity” in favor of ongoing restraint, creating a fresh kind of intimacy. Like a grand showman working overtime to tone things down, he lures viewers into an apparently straightforward scene, only to catch them off guard with new information.

There are no sudden twists, but “Roma” careens through unexpected developments with an organic flow. In one memorable example, a prolonged exchange at a movie theater includes a major, life-changing reveal — and then the scene continues in silence for several minutes, only to arrive at a gut punch.

While the narrative never takes “Roma” into unexpected territory, Curarón creates such a dynamic environment that it rarely matters. The sophistication of his Dolby Atmos sound design (which viewers of this Netflix release will want to experience in a theater) leads to immersive environments that emphasize how Cleo inhabits a busy world much larger than her interpersonal issues. On more than one occasion, the effect builds  to apocalyptic extremes when the arrival of natural forces overwhelm the soundtrack to a shocking degree.

Nevertheless, “Roma” also excels at operating as a traditional period piece, grappling with a Mexico swept up in the fervor of 1968 activism and an influx of popular culture. Snippets of television and movies come and go, striking a cartoonish juxtaposition to the cycle of everyday life. But messier dramas keep sneaking in: as a teary outdoor argument between Sofia and her husband comes to an end, a military parade sweeps the street, overwhelming her and marginalizing her grief. More often than not, Cleo is forced to absorb other people’s problems. “No matter what they tell you, we are always alone,” an angry Sofia tells Cleo one night, and it’s only much later that this devastating mantra truly hits her, with one of the most upsetting sequences in recent cinema.

However, even a shocking turn of events sets the stage for payoff much later, reflecting the rich emotional tapestry that Cuarón constructed in piecemeal. Much of the movie’s patient approach is grounded by Cleo’s extraordinary performance. Even as she’s forced to serve as a silent witness, she’s never entirely removed from the circumstances around her. She’s on the sidelines of history, but never irrelevant to its shifting flow, and at a key moment she’s forced to step forward.

As Cleo stumbles through one development after another, planes creep across the frame like a recurring Greek chorus, reminding us of the steady passage of time and its capacity to be cyclical and surprising at once. These sort of devices help “Roma” escape some of its tidier plot points, as well as the underdevelopment of the child characters who remain so central to Cleo’s life. Even the Cuarón stand-in lacks much personality. But that coming-of-age story has been told innumerable times in various contexts, and Cuaron’s wise to realize that Cleo’s has not. Five years after the intensity of “Gravity” used this medium to transcend Earth’s boundaries, “Roma” returns us to stable ground from a brilliant new perspective.

Netflix will release “Roma” in limited theaters on Wednesday, November 21

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Roma review: Alfonso Cuaron's new drama is one of the best films of the year

The mexican filmmaker makes even the most banal moments seem lyrical in this brilliantly observed piece of filmmaking , article bookmarked.

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This review was first published on 15 December 2018

Dir: Alfonso Cuarón ​ ; Starring: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Fernando Grediaga, Jorge Antonio Guerrero. Cert 15, 135 mins

Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma is one of the films of the year, brilliantly observed and with an intense sense of yearning, lyricism and emotional truthfulness running through its every frame. Cuarón not only wrote, produced and directed the film (which is based on his own childhood) but he shot it too, in very evocative black and white.

Cuarón’s most recent feature was the mindblowing sci-fi film Gravity . Roma couldn’t be more different and yet Cuarón here is able to make even the most banal moments seem lyrical. The setting is Mexico in the early 1970s. The main character is Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a maid working for a well-off middle class family.

We are drawn entirely into the world of Cleo, a character based directly on the housekeeper who worked for Cuarón’s parents. She is both an insider, regarded by the kids as part of the family, and someone always on the outside. She has to do the cleaning, the carrying, the cooking. She is both cherished and taken absolutely for granted. Cuarón’s portrait of the middle class household is both affectionate and occasionally barbed and satirical. They think nothing of getting even pregnant maids to shift their luggage for them and can be very high-handed.

In the course of the film, both Cleo and the family experience extreme upheaval. She has to deal with the consequences of a short-lived affair. Her boss Sofia’s marriage is crumbling. However, the most resonant scenes here aren’t the family rows or scenes of Cleo confronting her errant boyfriend but the quieter moments. You can’t help but marvel at the minutely detailed production design and at Cuarón’s ability to cram huge amounts of visual information into what might initially seem like everyday incidents. He will show Cleo at the cinema (incongruously watching British comedy star Terry-Thomas in a European war movie) and we will be able to see not just the incidents on the movie screen but all the hundreds of other spectators in perfect focus – with the maid a forlorn figure in the middle of the crowd.

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There is a moment similar to the spilling of the wine at the wedding in The Deer Hunter in which Cleo seems inadvertently to be bringing bad luck on herself – but superstition and religion play minimal roles here.

Cuarón extracts humour from unlikely sources. For example, it is a test of Sofia and her husband’s driving skills to navigate their enormous Ford Galaxy through the narrow alleyway. They tend to move very slowly but, because they are either drunk or distraught, they always seem to scrape the sides of the vehicle. The comedy lies in the sheer inevitability of them damaging the paintwork or bashing the mirror – or driving straight into the mounds of dog poop lying on the ground. Cuarón knows too just how to make kids fighting over a game of Scalextric seem funny and how to squeeze the humour out of a scene of a kid playing dead or of exercise fanatics standing on one leg.

Roma makes us aware of the turbulence outside the family’s home. Students are protesting. Police violence is never far away. We hear references to land disputes, poisonings and even to killings. The ructions aren’t just political. At one stage, Cleo is caught up in an earthquake while visiting the hospital. She remains the same impassive, kindly presence. Only very late on does she give vent to the emotions she has kept buttoned up for so long.

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The director has gone to extraordinary lengths to recreate the Mexico of the period. Everything – from the cars to the Mexico World Cup 1970 posters, from the furniture to the haircuts and clothes – feels just right. Roma (the name refers to the neighbourhood where the family lives) never falls prey to false sentimentality. The occasional harshness of its representation of the lost world of Cuarón’s childhood only adds to its resonance.

Roma is available on Netflix now

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Alfonso Cuarón's 'Roma' is considered one of the best films of the year. Here's why.

Plenty of filmmakers have made personal films, but not many have gone to the lengths Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón did to recreate his family home from childhood for his latest movie, “Roma.”

But “Roma” is not a portrait of the Oscar-winning director as a young boy. It’s about the woman Cuarón says helped raise him, a domestic worker named Liboria “Libo” Rodríguez, who looked after his family and their home.

“Roma” is a film about memory revisited. It’s a theme that extends to the film’s visual style, which is shot in black-and-white, but shot digitally so details are sharper, unlike the soft, grainer texture found in old movies.

Cuarón revisits his childhood with the experiences of his grown-up present and with a better understanding of the inequalities that existed in his household. He centers “Roma” not on the perspective of a light-skinned, middle-class Mexican boy but from that of the indigenous domestic worker who helped raise him since he was 9 months old and inspired his interest in the movies with many trips to the cinema.

“It was probably my own guilt about social dynamics, class dynamics, racial dynamics,” Cuarón told Variety , explaining that as a child, he didn’t understand that Rodríguez’s experiences were different than his. In interviews with Rodríguez, Cuarón learned more about the person beyond her nanny role to create the character of Cleo, who is played by first-time actor Yalitza Aparicio.

Cleo is one of two domestic workers in his middle-class home, but she’s often the one looking after Sofía’s (Marina de Tavira) four children. Outside of her duties, Cleo goes out on dates, falls in love and then into heartbreak. Just as Cleo’s life is about to change with an unannounced pregnancy, the family she works for is also going into its own crisis. After the family’s patriarch runs off with his mistress, the two women are united by their pain and duty to the children, but their uneasy relationship remains that of employer and employee.

Aparicio has earned much praise and attention for her emotional performance. Although she’s reserved when tending to the children, she finds a few breaks to catch up and gossip in the indigenous Mixtec language with her best friend, Adela (Nancy García). Aparicio, who speaks Spanish, did not know Mixtec before shooting “Roma” so García García, her friend offscreen as well, would coach her through her lines in Mixtec, while Cuarón helped her rehearse dialogue in Spanish.

Aparicio could not study up on her lines too far in advance because Cuarón chose to keep the script from his cast until it was almost time to shoot. Sometimes, they would not be told what was happening, so the director could capture their raw reactions.

There is so much detail in the film, that even on my second watch, I found new things to look at in the family home, the details of the courtyard and the extras walking around a bustling Mexico City of the ‘70s.

Production designer Eugenio Caballero told me at an Oscar event that Cuarón really tried to recreate his childhood home, down to the furniture and drapes. Because the movie is filmed in black-and-white, the production crew had to make sure the colors of clothes and upholstery looked accurate in greyscale.

News Lin-Manuel Miranda, Alfonso Cuarón among list of Golden Globe Nominees

Although “Roma” looks like a grand period piece, it lacks a score in favor of natural sounds in the neighborhood: layers upon layers of street sounds, the delighted shrieks of children playing, cars honking and the occasional intrusion of a marching band practice. Part of the reason why there’s been a push by film critics and fans to watch “Roma” in theaters is that the sound mix and production design were optimized for a theatrical experience, but since more people will be able to watch the movie on Netflix, the next best option is to play it on the largest screen in your home.

Such a deeply personal work has moved many viewers to reflect on their own experiences. If I may lightly go into some spoilers, there’s a central character who claims to not have wanted her child, which was one of a few times the movie got me to cry.

It’s still somewhat taboo to say something like that, but for a Mexican woman to say that in the 1970s? In Latin America (as in many other places in the world), motherhood is still tightly tied with womanhood. So much so, that I’ve been teased by some of my more traditional-minded Cuban relatives because I’ve chosen to delay motherhood for my career. Although it’s not explored deeply in the movie, I’m was moved to see it there at all.

In “Roma", Cuarón captures a sense of social and class inequalities in subtle ways. One evening, as the family settles in to watch TV, Cleo joins them — not on the couch but on a cushion on the floor to the side of the sofa. She’s not seen or treated as their equal, even as one of the kids holds onto her during the show and turns to her for comfort. Frustrated by her problems, Sofía takes her anger out on Cleo for not cleaning up after the family dog enough.

These are small gestures to reinforce the house’s hierarchy, and they reminded me of my own short stint of cleaning homes when I was in college. I remember the impersonality of the job, the long hours smelling chemicals and that the only conversation I had with my employer then was when I folded the sheets wrong.

No other movie in Cuarón’s filmography – which includes “Gravity,” “Children of Men” “Y Tu Mamá También” – is as personal as “Roma.” Yet, he created a film that is both deeply personal and universal, empathetic in spirit and astounding in its craft because the director also served as screenwriter, editor, producer and cinematographer after his longtime collaborator Emmanuel Lubezki had to drop out of the project.

Just as important as what Cuarón has accomplished is Aparicio’s work in the film which tells this very personal story at a time when Central Americans are being maligned in the U.S. The importance of having an indigenous woman leading one of the most anticipated movies of the year cannot be overstated.

Both U.S. Latino and Latin American media traditionally exclude faces like Aparicio’s because of colorism and racism. Recently, after Aparicio appeared on the cover of a U.S. magazine, some Mexican Twitter users used slurs to refer to Yalitza Aparicio , highlighting just how much work there still needs to be done to address those prejudices within our own communities.

“Roma” celebrates life in the face of monotony and adversity, captures the feeling of being overlooked and being the center of a family’s life. It is beautiful in its complications, surrealistic flourishes and thematic imagery. And “Roma” is most certainly a movie worth watching in this trying year.

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Monica Castillo is a New York-based freelance journalist. 

Review: ‘Roma’ lives up to lofty expectations with a beautiful, deliberate and ultimately moving portrait of domestic life

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Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma” has been the talk of the international film world since it won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in September, and at first — but only at first — it’s hard to see exactly why.

For what all the fuss has done, as pre-release fusses inevitably do, is create expectations and misapprehensions. Not about the quality of the movie, which is impeccable, but about its very nature.

Unlike other highly publicized projects like the gangbusters “A Star Is Born” or “Black Panther,” “Roma” is an extremely quiet, even meditative picture.

It’s a quite personal project played at the softer pitch of reality, rather than the higher frequency of drama by writer-director-producer Cuarón, whose childhood experiences are the bedrock of this family story and who also served as the film’s editor and cinematographer.

But because intense, life-threatening events arrive unbidden in these lives, and because the largely nonprofessional cast responds beautifully and without obvious effort, by the time “Roma” earns its R rating, we feel we haven’t merely witnessed a life, we’ve been fully immersed in one, and that makes all the difference emotionally.

Cuarón is one of contemporary cinema’s most accomplished and versatile directors, with movies like the space opera “Gravity,” the dystopian “Children of Men” and even “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” to his credit.

Although Cuarón’s resume is determinedly eclectic, “Roma” is something new even for him. Echoing in some ways the classics of Italian neo-realism, especially in its use of black and white, it is an epic of everydayness, as polished a personal film as you are likely to see.

Set in 1970 and 1971 and named after Colonia Roma, the Mexico City neighborhood Cuarón grew up in, “Roma” is as much a way-back machine as a movie, a boggling exact replica in objects as well as people from the director’s memory of this very specific time and place.

RELATED: With a major push into this year’s fall film festivals, Netflix flexes its awards season muscle »

To help set the scene, wizardly production designer Eugenio Caballero (“Pan’s Labyrinth”) found a Mexico City house scheduled for demolition and reconfigured it to nearly duplicate Cuarón’s boyhood home. The director’s sympathetic family members saw to it that an estimated 70% of the furniture on-screen are the items he saw as a child.

Cuarón also insisted that the cast members remind him of the real people who inspired the characters. After a literal village-to-village search for the picture’s protagonist, he found schoolteacher Yalitza Aparicio, luminous as Cleo, the family’s live-in maid/nanny modeled after the woman Cuarón considers a second mother.

The director not only wrote part of Cleo’s dialogue in Mixtec, one of his country’s indigenous languages, but he also hired Aparicio’s best friend to play her best friend in the picture so that they could be comfortable speaking Mixtec together.

That verisimilitude is, not surprisingly for a filmmaker of Cuarón’s abilities, no more than a means to an end. “Roma” is not a story of childhood remembered so much as childhood reflected upon from the wider, more sophisticated vantage point of adulthood — the better to determine what actually happened and what it might mean.

At its core, “Roma” is the story not of the young Cuarón, his siblings or his parents, but of Cleo, the emotional and physical constant in his life. Though set decades ago, it deals with very contemporary themes like the power of sisterhood and the nature of family and how both are necessary as bulwarks against the fragility and unfairness of life.

First thing you notice about “Roma,” aside from its intricate Dolby Atmos sound design, is the nature of its glowing black-and-white wide-screen cinematography.

Shot with a large-format digital camera and featuring frequent and hypnotic camera pans, “Roma” is not photographed by Cuarón’s regular cinematographer, the brilliant three-time Oscar winner Emmanuel Lubezki. Due to a scheduling conflict, the job fell to Cuarón himself, with impressive results.

“Roma” begins by following Cleo through her exhausting days, processing an enormous amount of laundry and housework and sticking like a second skin to the four children in her charge, putting them to bed, waking them up and doing everything in between.

RELATED: Alfonso Cuarón delves into his childhood for ‘Roma’ and already talk turns to Oscars »

Though the children’s mother, Sofia (Marina de Tavira), is involved, their doctor father is rarely there. He’s idolized when he does come home, carefully maneuvering his Ford Galaxy into a parking area that’s just a hair too small.

The dramatic engine of “Roma” is the parallel crises Cleo and Sofia go through, and how both the women and the family rise to meet the challenges.

First the return of the family’s father from a conference in Canada keeps getting postponed and postponed, with Sofia increasingly frantic, until the inevitable happens.

At roughly the same time, Cleo, who has been set up by her best friend with a young man from the military, endures unexpected consequences to that liaison.

Even though barriers of class remain between employer and employee, they realize that they have to reconfigure the family to survive not only the everyday but also unexpected tragedy.

One of “Roma’s” gifts is its ability to subtly interweave the political state of the nation with this personal story, culminating in a visually extraordinary re-creation of a notorious moment in modern Mexican history, the 1971 Corpus Christi massacre of university students.

Though it takes the risk of appearing too quiet too long, “Roma” and its melding of the personal with a glimpse of a society veering toward collapse is incontestably persuasive, a film whose like we will probably not see again.

-------------

Rating: R, for graphic nudity, some disturbing images and language

Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes

Playing: Opens Nov. 21 at Landmark, West Los Angeles (also streaming on Netflix beginning Dec. 14)

Nancy Garcia, Marina de Tavira and Yalitza Aparicio discuss working with Alfonso Cuarón on Netflix’s “Roma,” which won the top prize at the 2018 Venice Film Festival and is generating major awards season buzz.

[email protected]

@KennethTuran

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On "Roma"

A review of alfonso cuarón's film.

No contemporary filmmaker has shown the versatility of style and subject that Alfonso Cuarón has. Cuarón first got noticed in this country with his fourth film, Y Tu Mamá También , an earthy, raunchy road comedy that played as if Henry Miller had written an ode to the horny sons of the Mexico City bourgeoisie. He zigged from Mamá to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the first film that hinted that series could be something more than competently filmed illustrations of J. K. Rowling’s books. Cuarón had already had experience adapting children’s literature. His first American film was a startlingly sensual adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess. The movie has such vividness of detail and intensity of emotion that you surrender to it just as you might have surrendered to Burnett when you read her as a child (or, as I first did, in my twenties). Cuarón followed A Little Princess with his marvelous modern-day version of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, starring Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow in the Pip and Estella roles. It was not a happy experience. The studio, Twentieth Century Fox, interfered with the film, removing it from its scheduled Christmas release date and dumping it into theaters in the dead month of January. Most critics were happy to follow the studio’s lead and dismiss it, and Cuarón himself reportedly doesn’t like it, but along with David Lean’s 1946 version of the same novel and Carol Reed’s 1968 Oliver!, it’s the best Dickens film, lush and strange and true to its source as well as to its own vision. The late film critic Robin Wood cited it as an example of a movie adaptation that was faithful yet so free that viewers forgot about the source and entered fully into the world the film created.

After the Harry Potter film, Cuarón turned to another unlikely literary source, the mystery novelist P. D. James’s Children of Men, transforming her rather sour conservative dystopia about a future in which childbirth has ceased into what the critic Amy Nicholson called “a grim nativity.” Perhaps the only fitting equivalent to Children of Men is Ingmar Bergman’s greatest film, the 1968 Shame, which, like Cuarón’s movie, gives as bleak a view of the future and of human nature as could be imagined without ever becoming inhuman itself. Like Bergman’s movie, Children of Men knocked you flat.

So did Cuarón’s last film, Gravity , in which a space shuttle is destroyed, leaving two astronauts (Sandra Bullock and George Clooney) floating in the cosmos while trying to rescue themselves. Despite its epic setting Gravity is perhaps the most intimate of all Cuarón’s work: we are alone with the only human presence in the vastness of space, and the furious will to survive flickers against the overwhelming fact of our mortality and our insignificance when measured against creation. Gravity felt like an implicit refutation of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick’s film showed no feeling for the passing of its human characters, bland to begin with, but welcomed rebirth via technological advancement represented by the gooey symbolism of the Keane-eyed star child. (The film’s famous final image looks like one of Operation Rescue’s more acceptable posters.) Gravity, on the other hand, beginning in space, was a passionate odyssey of return to earth and thus an implicit return to all that is human. Its final image, Sandra Bullock taking tentative steps on terra firma, couldn’t help but recall Kubrick’s apes walking upright. But instead of people being left behind in the chain of cosmic evolution, Cuarón gave us a pilgrim returning home, intensely aware of and grateful for her humanity.

If Gravity was an epic film told intimately, Cuarón’s latest film, Roma, is an intimate story told on an epic scale. Most scenes contain only a few characters, and even at its height the drama never dwarfs the people on-screen. This chronicle of a year in the life of a young maid, Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), who works for a Mexico City family of the professional class (the father is a doctor, the mother teaches biochemistry), begins in fall 1970 and Cleo is the movie’s warm, gently beating heart. From moment to moment Roma (the title is the name of the neighborhood where the film takes place) is a very quiet film. And yet you walk out of it reaching to the greatest movies for comparison. A New Year’s gathering of the upper-middle class, all of them content within their own self-constructed bubble, has echoes of Renoir’s Rules of the Game. But especially in two extended sequences toward the end, Roma recalls Vittorio de Sica at his greatest. As de Sica did, Cuarón removes any barrier between the audience and the people on-screen. By the time the dramatic climaxes arrive, we’re unprotected and overwhelmed, stunned by the artistry of what we’re seeing, and knowing emotionally that we will carry them with us from this point on.

Cuarón knows the difference between the characters whose empathy is, if not hobbled, at least regulated by their awareness of class, and the ones who are incapable of empathy.

And yet in execution, Roma is like no other great humanist film. When a movie combines a humanist sensibility and a working-class protagonist, it is almost automatically claimed to be neorealist, and Roma is not. The calm tone and naturalistic surface may keep some from seeing just how stylized it is. Cuarón acted as his own cinematographer and photographed the film in a grainless black and white that seems to combine soft and luminous light with the encroaching gray mists of memory. Most of the movie has been shot from the middle distance, in slow, sometimes circular pans, the camera moving through the set keeping the characters in mostly medium shot. At moments, we find ourselves looking at the crowded frame—a Mexico City street outside a movie theater; a New Year’s Eve celebration in the country—and only gradually does the shot’s point of focus, usually Cleo, become apparent. It’s strange to talk about a film that is so emotionally close, yet leaves you, after it is over, with vivid memories of the face of only the main character (and, to a lesser extent, the faces of the female head of the household, Señora Sofia, played by Marina de Tavira, and her mother, Señora Teresa, played by Verónica García).

The method takes some getting used to–and it may prove to be too subtle for some viewers. Edmund Wilson once described the work of the Moscow Art Theater as “the art of steady under-emphasis and effects that are slowly unfolded.” Cuarón sets this pace from the beginning. Roma opens on an extended close-up of the paving stones of the entryway to the family house. We hear a bucket being filled and then scrubbing sounds. Gradually we see water and soap suds trickle down into the frame. The camera tilts up to show Cleo in the midst of her chores. We follow her through the house, gathering sheets, picking up the youngest boy (there are three of them, and a girl) from school, returning home and heading up to the roof to do laundry. It’s a slow, deliberate sequence of life progressing through the banal routine of chores. And yet it’s not meant to convey banality or meaninglessness. Cuarón’s method here is one of gradual immersion, like a new sponge being laid on top of water. Bit by bit we become saturated with the atmosphere, even if we never quite merge with it. We are in the same position as Cleo, in this world and yet not quite part of it. The point, of course, is that we are in the same position as Cleo herself, in this world and yet not quite part of it. Over the course of the year in which we follow Cleo, the family she works for will experience its own upheavals as the father leaves to live with his mistress; Cleo will become pregnant by her boyfriend Fermin (Jorge Antonio Guerrero) and lose the baby; and, for her and the family, life will go on.

What feels like the distance from which we watch Cleo is actually part of Cuarón’s particular method here: he has acknowledged the film as autobiographical, a tribute to Libo, the maid who took care of him as a child. (The film is dedicated to her.) The events of the film mirror his own upbringing. By centering the film on Cleo Cuarón is performing an act of self-effacement. The critics who have talked about Roma as being about the filmmaker’s childhood have missed the point. Placing the characters based on himself and his family in the background, Cuarón focuses on the person taken for granted amidst the swirl of family life. He empathizes with Cleo yet does not presume he can fully know what’s going on inside her. Had he done that, it is a dull certainty that he would have faced criticism for imposing his voice on a character of a different class and gender.

That choice hasn’t prevented Cuarón from facing the ire of those who want to claim that because we see Cleo largely during her working hours, Cuarón pretends sympathy for a working-class woman but never gives her a voice of her own. This is a strange charge coming from film critics who, supposedly trained in reading the visual, might be able to infer what’s going on inside Cleo from Cuarón’s consistent focus on the tension playing itself out on Yalitza Aparicio’s face–between what she is feeling and the social mask that she must maintain. In choosing to identify with the outsider rather than the characters he must surely know best, Cuarón is testing himself, demanding of himself the empathy that is the indispensable essence of humanist art.

As Cleo, Aparicio, a twenty-four-year-old schoolteacher from the Mexican state of Oaxaca who had never acted before, is in the great tradition of the nonprofessionals de Sica used in Bicycle Thieves, Shoeshine, and Umberto D. It would be wrong to say there is no art in her performance; rather, I’d say, there is none of the artifice that would cause her to comment on Cleo, to signal her emotions to the camera, as opposed to what she does, which is to exist in front of the camera naturally, unaffectedly. Aparicio has an oval-shaped face and somewhat sad eyes that are completely open, and yet Cleo, being a servant, has to take care to guard her emotions. And so the performance carries the feel of what it means simply to get on with life, neither stifling our emotions nor allowing ourselves to become incapacitated by them. It’s miraculous.

The contradictions of Cleo’s position are conveyed in one tangled moment when she joins the members of the family, who are settled in the den watching a comedy show on TV. Cleo kneels by the couch and one of the boys, with no fuss, puts his arm around her shoulders. In the midst of this, Señora Sofia tells Cleo to get her husband some tea. There’s no meanness to it, but it breaks the intimacy of the moment between Cleo and the boy, stating the barrier that not even the proverbial servant who’s like a member of the family can cross.

And yet no one treats Cleo as if she were property. When she has to confess to Señora Sofia that she’s pregnant, she’s treated with genuine tenderness and reassured that this does nothing to change her place in the family home. Señora Sofia provides prenatal care and accompanies Cleo to medical appointments. Señora Teresa goes with her to pick out a crib. Cuarón knows the difference between the characters whose empathy is, if not hobbled, at least regulated by their awareness of class, and the ones who are incapable of empathy, such as Cleo’s boyfriend Fermin. When Fermin gets out of the bed in which he and Cleo have been spending a stolen afternoon so he can demonstrate his martial arts moves, the sequence recalls the scene in John Schlesinger’s film of Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd in which Terence Stamp’s Sergeant Troy displays his swordsmanship for Julie Christie’s Bathsheba Everdene. But there’s a swagger in Troy, a sense of just how much he enjoys showing off; in Fermin and his hard, dead eyes, we sense a cold efficiency.

Just how cold becomes apparent in the movie’s most gut-wrenching sequence, in which the political turmoil that has stayed in the background (the “Guerra sucia” between Mexico’s ruling PRI party and opposing groups of guerrillas and leftists) bursts out and sweeps Cleo into it. This passage, which lasts for nearly ten minutes as the consequences of Fermin and Cleo’s final encounter escalate, moves with the inevitable, inescapable unfolding of tragedy. Its execution is as clear an example as I can recall of the difference between the hacks who exploit calamity and violence to manipulate an audience’s emotions, and those rare artists who intensify our feelings so that we respond as deeply as possible even though we know our hearts will, from that moment on, be wounded by what we see.

Cuarón cannot top that sequence, but he equals it with a long, agonizing scene set at the seaside that, as Gravity did, makes us feel the majesty and fury of the natural world, our helplessness in the face of it, and the simultaneous fragility and vitality of life.

I don’t wish to give the impression that because these sequences are the biggest and most overtly dramatic in the movie they are somehow the payoff of Roma, the reward for putting up with the seemingly ordinary moments that surround it. These scenes are the most overt manifestation of what is happening in those deceptively inconsequential moments: they are the culmination of what the movie’s accretion of detail builds toward, an awareness of the depths that connect the characters to one another as well as to what stands in the way of those connections, the realities of class and the cross-currents of circumstance.

Like an increasing number of new films, Roma opened in a few theaters before becoming available to stream on Netflix–though both its visual beauty and the size of its vision demand that it be seen on the big screen. I’m grateful the film is widely available, and I don’t wish to sound churlish when presented with the gift of a film as great as this one. But I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say that, even if the film were available only to art-house audiences, I’d worry that moviegoers have become too conditioned by spectacle and obviousness, and too impatient to watch a movie that demands patience, whose claim to being epic lies in the steady gathering of emotional force rather than in physical scale or in pummeling the audience. And if that happens, it will be audiences who have lost out, because Roma affirms that it’s still possible for great movies to be made. Not simply good ones, not films that are a respite from the surrounding glut, but movies that are conceived and executed on a level that even good films don’t aspire to. Roma is one of those works that leave you feeling as if every nerve ending were open, revitalized, both exalted and firmly tethered to the earth. Which is a way of saying that, at this horrible moment in our history, Alfonso Cuarón’s film makes you grateful to be alive.

Louise Glück’s Late Style

The critic as friend, rachel cusk, you might also like, life unamplified, her guy bradlee, the films of alice rohrwacher, new perspectives, enduring writing.

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The fluids of Roma : necropolitics and class in Cuarón’s cinematic memoir

Abstract This article argues that some of the strongest visual and symbolic elements that glue Roma together is the use of fluids as metaphors of racial and class division in 1970s Mexico, as well as the site in which the characters find their common humanity and reveal their inner states. Roma is both a film about common humanity despite class and race, and about how engrained inequalities in the Mexican ethos allow the State to exercise biopolitics (the modulation of life in Foucauldian thought) and severe necropolitics, the mechanics in which the State protects the lives of some by justifying the deaths of others. Through a visual analysis of key scenes in Alfonso Cuarón’s film, the author reveals key socio-political contradictions in contemporary Mexico, which are revealed by this highly personal cinematic memoir .

The deeply personal Roma (2018) has been lauded as Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón’s finest work, a triumphant return to Spanish language cinema and to his hometown. In the film, the director and his team painstakingly reconstructed early 1970s Mexico City and his childhood home to tell the story of a broken bourgeois family and its in-house maid, Cleo, an indigenous migrant who experiences maternal loss when she delivers a stillborn daughter. The film, however, is unapologetically political as well, and explores the brutality of postcolonial oppression. The story is set in a juncture in which Mexico aligned with the United States and the incumbent party, the Revolutionary Institutional Party or PRI, used the armed forces to crush social movements. The country was ruled by what Nobel Prize winner, Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, called “the perfect dictatorship”. Like in other Latin American nations such as Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, in the post-war period the Mexican state apparatus used both military and paramilitary forces to silence dissent and maintain the status quo. Roma follows in the tradition of twentieth century Mexican muralism: like the triumvirate of the post-Revolution period (painters Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco), in Roma Cuarón builds a complex visual network of political, aesthetic and emotional threads that speaks of Mexico’s postcolonial woes.

Shot in pristine black and white, the film is also highly sensorial: the director lingers on the objects and sensations that inhabit his carefully reconstructed world. It is in the coming together of the emotional, the political and the affective that this Netflix production stands out. The film opens and closes with waves and bubble-infested foam. In the opening credits, Cleo, the domestic worker masterfully played by newcomer non-actor Yalitzia Aparicio (of Mixteco indigenous origin), mops the house’s central patio, an architectural feature common in Mexican homes, much influenced by Spanish-Moorish architecture. This material feature is also an echo of Mexico City’s colonial identity. The patio or central courtyard becomes the epicentre of family life and of the film’s materialization of personal memories. In his review of the film, Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers also highlights the complex ideas communicated through this seemingly banal shot: “From the opening scene of Cleo scrubbing the driveway, the sudsy water reflecting a jet flying overhead, the film suggests how global events intrude on this not-so-idyllic household” 1 . Even though she shares deep emotional connections with the patrones (her employers), Cleo performs hard domestic tasks that challenge her dignity, such as cleaning up the faeces and pee that the family’s dog leaves behind. She also washes the dishes and does the laundry by hand, and Cuarón shows these processes in excruciating detail, highlighting how arduous paid domestic labour is.

The film works as an affective machine. Like Proust’s proverbial madeleine in In Search of Lost Time , the sights and sounds of Roma are a feast of nostalgic triggers. Roma looks and sounds like Mexico City, as any native chilango 2 would attest. As a high-pitched whistle is heard announcing that the knife sharpener is nearby, characters speak in Spanish and Mixteco, an indigenous language commonly heard in the Mexican capital, a megalopolis that features both immense wealth and inhumane precarity. Visually, the film is populated with dualities that encapsulate the many contradictions of contemporary Mexico. 3 Roma ’s Mexico is a country still immersed in colonial dynamics of haves and have-nots, the living and the dead. These dualities are materialised through contrasting imagery that pins the mestizo and the indigenous against each other.

In this article I argue that one of the strongest visual and symbolic elements that glue Roma discursively together is the use of fluids as metaphors of racial and class division, as well as the site in which the characters find their common humanity and reveal their inner states. By describing how vital fluids move action forward in the film, we can also explore the power dynamics at hand. The hegemonic powers that decide how water and blood flow have a final say on life and death.

Roma is both a film about common humanity despite class and race, and about how engrained inequalities in the Mexican ethos allow the State to exercise biopolitics (the modulation of life in Foucauldian thought) and severe necropolitics . Necropolitics are what Melissa Wright, following Foucault and postcolonial theorist Achille Mbembe and in the context of Mexico’s current wave of violence, has explained as the mechanics in which “governments protect the lives of some by justifying the deaths of others”. 4 In necropolitical practices, Wright argues, women (like Cleo) are particularly vulnerable: “As the proliferation of gendered violence around the world indicates, this kind of violence is constitutive of necropolitics: the politics of death and the politics of gender go hand in hand”. 5 In what follows, I lay out Roma ’s political backbone and then break down key uses of fluids as a materialization of everyday necropolitical practices.

Deciphering Roma ’s socio-politics

Roma begs analysis right from its title. It is a film haunted not only by Cuarón’s childhood memories from a tumultuous year that saw his parents’ marriage break apart, but also by cinematic memory at large. The title may not only reference the director’s childhood neighbourhood of La Roma, but also Roberto Rosellini’s Roma città aperta ( Rome, Open City ,1945), particularly as it pins personal tragedy against the larger backdrop of political and social history. Just as Rosellini dealt with Italian identity after the horrors of World War II (a historical period that defined necropolitics), Cuarón captures a moment of tense calm in Mexico City’s political history, merely three years after the 1968 student massacre in Tlatelolco, in which the army violently crushed a protest movement in the eve of the Olympic Games. 6

The connection to Rosellini’s Rome, Open City extends to stylistic influence. In fact, Roma is a distant echo of post-war Italian neorealism, with Federico Fellini’s theatricality, nostalgia and humour in La Strada (1954) and Amarcord (1973) also coming to mind. 7 Cuarón also delves into the social inequalities that Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel explored in his seminal work Los olvidados ( The Young and the Damned , 1950) which is about disadvantaged youth in the early years of Mexico City’s trepid and unruly expansion, the birth of necropolitics in the capital.

The film’s connections to Italian neorealism and Buñuel’s Mexican period hint at its politics. Roma highlights the opposing identities of indigeneity and Mexico City’s white middle-class, known as whitexicans in contemporary popular vernacular. 8 This racial and class division has permeated social life and necropolitical policies in Mexico since colonial times. The New Spain followed a strict caste system in which Europeans were up the top and mixed-race people and Indigenous people were kept down the bottom 9 . Cleo comes from the state of Oaxaca, one of the most impoverished areas in the country, but also one of the richest when it comes to indigenous insurgency against colonial and then postcolonial white domination, epitomised today by corporations that seek to extract natural resources and profit from tourism. The whitexican class, on the other hand, sits in a cultural limbo between US popular culture and a new cosmopolitan Mexico City identity emblazoned by the ideals of technological progress, nationalism and modernity, ideas that the director approached in his debut film Solo con tu pareja ( Love in the Time of Hysteria , 1991).

The racial politics of the 1970’s described in Roma are still present today, which helps the film communicate to contemporary audiences in Mexico and other postcolonial societies. The discrimination of the indigenous population in Mexico is nothing short of vexing given the demographical composition of Mexican society. More than 11 million people are identified as purely indigenous (more than 10% of the population), and in states like Yucatán indigenous individuals surpass 50% of the total population 10 . Most of the population, moreover, has a mixed indigenous/European background and are identified as mestizo . Even though Mexicans do share a proud and nostalgic view of pre-Columbine civilizations like the Aztec and the Maya, a view that has been key in building a national identity (an concepy the director toyed with in his semi-autobiographical Y tu mamá también ), racism is a complex and engrained cultural trait, as Fortes De Leff acknowledges:

In spite of strong genetic hybridization, most racist feelings in Mexico have their source in differentiation from the Indians, who became the symbol of the uncultured, the savage, the “other.” However, the indigenous peoples were the ancient inhabitants of these territories when conquered by the Spaniards. Spanish colonization started a process of domination that has since become a symbolic organizer that underlies feelings and attitudes of racism, discrimination, and segregation that have been internalized in the minds of Mexicans for generations. 11

The director’s preoccupation with racial and class ruptures in Mexican society also date back to Y tu mamá también, in which, Emily Hind argues, “The notion of interior colonization means to suggest that Mexicans organize themselves according to strict hierarchies without visible external pressures and that this social organization corresponds to general benevolence toward U.S. culture and often disdain for aspects of native Mexican culture”. 12 . In Roma , Cuarón weaves together an intricate set of visual elements that help him materialise these oppositions between the rich postcolonial elite and the original owners of the land, many of whom have migrated to Mexico City escaping violence and lack of opportunities in the abandoned countryside.

For example, in an early scene one of the kids Cleo looks after is wearing an elaborate astronaut costume. Further down the film, when Cleo visits the slums in the outskirts of Mexico City, we see a child running around with a bucket on his head, a makeshift astronaut helmet. One country is host to grossly different realities: privilege meets misery as the government promises progress for all, as shown in the political propaganda that populates the film. Dualities adorn the film like a set of opposing mirrors. Throughout the movie we also see various aircraft crossing the skies, a reminder of how official State discourse spoke of the entry of Mexico into the “First World” 13 , while on the ground social unrest, US interventionism and class struggle ran rampant. Cuarón’s Mexico City is much less complex and chaotic than the megalopolis it is today in part due to unorganised urban growth that has led to the formation of marginalised belts of misery, 14 one of which, Ciudad Neza, is shown in Roma .

Cleo washes clothes by hand.

Doing the dishes, the rhythm of the everyday.

Necropolitics and inner states materialised: the fluids that run through Roma

Fluids of different kinds are used in Roma to materialize necropolitical practices and the characters’ inner states. The use of fluids as metaphor is not unprecedented in cinema, of course. 15 McKenzie Wark, for instance, describes how Australian director George Miller used blood, human breastmilk, water and petrol to construct the social structures of his dystopian Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). 16 It is pertinent to note that Miller’s film deals directly with Australian identity in the same way that Roma puts a mirror in front of Mexican contemporary idiosyncrasy. The social structures and affective states of Roma flow in water, milk, semen, alcohol, blood and amniotic fluid. Fluids permeate both human relations and the relations between citizens and a necropolitical State apparatus that determines who bleeds, who lives and who has access to drinking water through cruel policies. Both on and under the surface Roma is a film in which fluids both exemplify and determine characters’ fates and establish their place in the highly hierarchical 1970s Mexico City.

Reproductive politics (a form of biopolitics) lay at the core of Roma ’s dramatic structure. Even though it references his personal experiences, in Roma Cuarón has created a distinctly feminine film, an ode to the Latin American form of matriarchy. The two main male characters in Roma are absent fathers who seem to have a purely or mostly biological link to their children, the precarious link of semen. In Roma ’s gender dynamics adult males are simply seed-planters, while women are carriers of fecundity and the purveyors of emotional support. Women are mothers, doctors and providers. The adult men (the patriarch Antonio, played by Fernando Grediaga, and Cleo’s sexual partner Fermín, played by Jorge Antonio Guerrero) are mere ejaculators. Seminal fluid builds fragile bridges between men and their lovers, between men and their offspring. Fermín eventually becomes a paramilitary fighter, a direct enactor of necropolitics.

The film uses aquatic imagery to communicate the vulnerability of women, particularly indigenous domestic workers. Even in some of the film’s everyday minutiae, liquids are a catalyst for establishing power dynamics. In a key introductory scene, we see the family watching TV on the couch while Cleo sits on the floor, caressing one of the children’s hair. The patriarch wants a tea and the matriarch orders Cleo to get it, to the intense disapproval of the child. Despite being relegated to a second-class citizen status by the family and its dynamics, Cleo is in charge of modulating the various flows that keep the house clean and the family healthy. She makes orange juice, washes and cooks with motherly love. Cleo performs these chores with the determination of a Buddhist monk. Or rather, without questioning the power dynamics at hand. In many of these tasks water is used as a visual premonition of what is to come: water flows from taps and buckets, mimicking the tides that will work as backdrop for the film’s climatic scene. Later in the film Cleo experiences an earthquake while she is visiting a maternity ward, having just found out she is pregnant. As the ground shakes a piece of debris falls on an incubator, inches from a newborn. Mexico City is an aqueous metropolis: the ancient Tenochtitlán was built by the Aztecs on top of a lake, which was fully drained by the Spanish conquistadores . Each earthquake is a reminder of the city’s past as a sort of Pre-Hispanic Venice, of the weak, muddy foundations of the capital city.

Water is also used as a narrative device to give Cleo a rare moment of privacy. As a domestic worker, there is a tense balance between her private existence and her working life. In a tender but troubling moment, Cleo and her friend Adela, the family’s other in-house maid (played by non-actor Nancy García García, Yalitzia’s best friend in real life), joke about how the patrona , Sofía (Marina de Tavira), might be spying on them while they exercise at night. They turn off the light, wary of the fact that their employers could get upset at how much electricity the ‘service’ is consuming. This scene highlights Cleo and Adela’s liminal existence (and those of millions of domestic workers across the globe): they are ‘like’ part of the family, but ‘not quite’. In an atypical instant of solitude, Cleo takes a shower. On a middle shot we see her dark silhouette being covered by water, a curtain of steam emanating from this moment of everyday bliss. Cleo enjoys this personal, artificial rain, a respite in the routine comings and goings of chores and screaming children.

Cleo takes a shower, a rare private moment.

Rain and a cleansing road trip to the ocean.

Rain is one of the most used and powerful metaphors in cinema and is often used to symbolise a character’s inner struggles or a general sense of malaise or chaos. 17 Throughout Cuarón’s career we have seen him use rain as a setting for key plot moments. In his adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations (1998), for example, he had the star-crossed lovers kiss under a torrential rain that blurred the screen and gave them a false sense of intimacy. Pamela Katz summarises this cathartic scene: “Here, Finn and Estella run home through the rainy streets of Manhattan, in a scene which must be dubbed Great Expectations meets The Graduate . This is followed by a scene where they finally consummate their lifelong passion in a night of wild sex. Estella leaves, and the cycle of Finn’s agony begins anew.” 18 Rain is a premonition of the existential storm to come, a dynamic he replicates in Roma two decades later.

In Roma , rain works as a cleansing force, as a purifier of trauma and loss. In a scene that brings us back to joyous representations of childhood onscreen, we see two of the children play with hail, water in its solid, miraculous state. Even if the family is experiencing turmoil and unfixable brakes, the children get back their innocence, their primal state of joy. Cleo then collects them. We see the encounter from inside the house in a clever shot through which Cuarón differentiates the space of childhood and the space of troubled adult life. Rain makes another appearance in the final act of the film as the matriarch Sofía, a mournful Cleo and the kids head to the beachside in Veracruz. The children will soon find out that their father is about to leave them. As the sea timidly appears through the windshield, we see drops falling. A symphony of little spheres, a premonition of what is to come. The trip is an act of purification, a shedding of skin, a goodbye to the ideal family that the clan never truly was. A goodbye to Cleo’s stillborn daughter.

Rain as a purifier.

The fluids of social inequality

The imagery of fluids also highlights the contrast between Mexico’s white neo-colonial elite and indigenous have-nots, those who deserve to live and those who are dispensable in a necropolitical system. In perhaps the most Fellinesque episode of the film, a group of Americans and upper-class Mexicans shoot guns. They own land, we are led to believe, unlawfully taken from peasants, just like the land taken from Cleo’s mother in her native Oaxaca. The bullets fly over a pristine pond. Like in Renoir’s The Rules of the Game ( La Règle du Jeu , 1939) we are reminded of the banality of bourgeois leisure activities, on how they are a re-enactment of war. Nearby, a child dressed in full astronaut costume jumps over puddles, followed by other children and a German shepherd. The scene is bucolic, as if taken from a French Post-Impressionist painting, say Georges-Pierre Seraut’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” (1884-1886). For the rich water is a source of leisure, nothing more, and its existence is never questioned.

Water, however, has historically been used as a necropolitical weapon by Latin American postcolonial governments. Water scarcity is suffered by thousands of impoverished communities in Mexico and other parts of the Global South. When Cleo goes in search for the man who impregnated her she encounters a makeshift neighbourhood with open sewers, much like the setting of Buñuel’s aforementioned The Young and the Damned . Precariously positioned wood boards work as bridges. The contrast is stark and, I would argue, intentionally positioned. This is what Latin American precarity looks like. This is what the unfulfilled promises of progress bring. As the region’s natural resources have been pillaged for centuries since the arrival of Christopher Columbus’ vessels in 1492, water has now become a limited commodity. 19 In the slums shown in Roma thousands of migrants from inner Mexico make the outskirts of the city their home, building makeshift homes and inhabiting dusty neighborhoods that grow chaotically, oftentimes without government support.

A stream and a pretend cosmonaut; natural water as source of leisure.

Bourgeois games: shooting over the pond.

The stagnated waters of Latin American precarity.

Alcohol is also used by the director as a class differentiator. During the New Year’s Eve party hosted by a group of Americans and whitexicans , we see a shot that can be described as a still life. A baby bottle, toys and a boar’s head, along with a full ashtray, wine glasses and a bottle of alcohol, lay on a side table. This single frame tells the story of this night of contained debauchery for the rich. Meanwhile Cleo celebrates the new year in a traditional cantina, where indigenous peasants drink mezcal, pulque and the ever-present Coca-Cola, a sign of American imperialism, a necropolitical fluid. As June Nash reminds us, Coca-Cola has become both a source of exploitation and a symbol of corporate colonialism: “Today the major extraction of groundwater in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas is done by the Coca-Cola Company. The company now bottles the water and sells it throughout the world and to the people from whom it was expropriated”. 20 Cleo is offered mezcal and pulque, two traditional alcoholic drinks that are a source of cultural identity. In this table, indigenous culture and American-led imperialism coexist. Another still life representing endemic and invasive forces.

Later during the party an alarm bell can be heard in the distance and we learn that the property is being threatened by a fire. Suddenly we see rich and poor, young and old (even children, barely toddlers) try to put the fire out with buckets full of water, alcohol and adrenaline feverishly running through the veins of some. Water once again works as a dramatic trigger. This episode shares similarities, both formally and discursively, with Carlos Reygadas’ Este es mi reino , a 2010 short film in which a group of upper-class whitexicans hold a party in a rural area and set a car on fire (the short is part of the anthology film Revolución ). In Roma and Este es mi reino two white directors attempt to understand the violence that lies beneath race relations in today’s Mexico. The results in both cases are literally incendiary.

Still life: milk and booze.

Mezcal, pulque, beer and the “dark waters of imperialism” a.k.a. Coca-Cola.

Waters of life and death

One of the subplots of the film sees the formation of paramilitary groups trained by US operatives and used to repress left-leaning movements. As a pregnant Cleo witnesses a terrible murder of a protestor her waters break. A stream of clear fluid trickles down from her leg and onto the ground as, nearby, dozens of protestors bleed to death. The water that exits Cleo’s body is yet another premonition of bad things to come. Rather than the announcement of a new life, of renewed hope, the fluid that flows from Cleo’s amniotic sac merges with the blood being spilled on the streets as a paramilitary group massacres students and union members. Eros and Thanatos, the waters of life and death. Part of Cuarón’s mastery as a filmmaker lies in how he intertwines personal and epic tragedies, as The New York Times critic Manohla Dargis contends: “Cuarón uses one household on one street to open up a world, working on a panoramic scale often reserved for war stories, but with the sensibility of a personal diarist. It’s an expansive, emotional portrait of life buffeted by violent forces, and a masterpiece.” 21 As Cleo rushes to the hospital we see a young woman holding the flaccid body of a dead protestor, a cruel reimagining of “The Pietà”. The image of the dead student is also reminiscent of twentieth century Mexican visual art, most notably of photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo’s “Striking Worker Murdered” from 1934. In this image, as in Cuarón’s brief glimpse into the horrors of Mexico’s “dirty war”, blood flows out of a young body, the vital fluid tracing maps of a truncated and unexplored life.

Cleo’s waters break: violence and birth, birth through violence.

A slain student lies on the ground, blood flowing.

All fluids converge in the ocean. In one of the final scenes of the film and its emotional epicentre, Cleo is at the brink of drowning in the sea, incapable of swimming but capable of motherly love. She has been left to care for the children, whom she instructs to stay near the shore. Her incapacity to swim is a class differentiator: she has never been allowed leisure. Cleo loses sight of the children and starts walking among the waves. Like the cleansing water from the opening credits, the waves come and go rhythmically. Human life is insignificant vis-à-vis the old cadence of the seas. We are led to believe that she will lose the children altogether, that in a Judaeo-Christian twist of fate she will be punished for getting pregnant and miscarrying. But she finds the children, a matriarch at last, and then their bodies blend when they reach the shore and embrace, knowing that the they will always share the bond of near-death.

The director had already used the ocean and other waterbodies as sites of characters’ transformations or climatic events. In his coming-of-age road trip Y tu mama también (2001), teenagers Julio (Gael García Bernal) and Tenoch (Diego Luna), who come from opposing socioeconomic backgrounds, revel into questions of sex and friendship when they arrive to an undeveloped beach with Luisa (Maribel Verdú), a Spanish woman dying of cancer. The last time we see Luisa she is diving into the sea after having told Julio and Tenoch: “Life is like the surf, so give yourself away like the sea”. Earlier in the film we see Julio and Tenoch masturbating on diving boards by a pool. We then see their semen falling into the water. In Gravity (2013), the main character, a lost female astronaut, has a rebirth when her capsule crashes into the ocean after falling down from space. Just like Cleo in Roma , these characters find themselves when encountering the crushing immensity of the seas.

Stylistically, the Roma ocean scene is a continuation of the filmmaker’s propensity to use long takes in key moments of his films, which imbues them with a sense of fluidity . With cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki 22 , Cuarón has developed an aesthetic in which prolonged takes allow cinematic time to be stretched and for the camera to truly inhabit cinematic space as a unique, irreplaceable gaze. These long takes, epitomised by the Roma ocean sequence, are the purest form of cinematic fluidity. As Udden describes when discussing the director’s dystopian fantasy Children of Men (2006), these long takes “become not merely the stylistic fabric of abject spectacles about the end of the human race; they become spectacles in their own right”. 23 Long takes in Cuarón’s movies have become not only his signature as an auteur, but also cinematic events within themselves. Working as his own cinematographer 24 , Cuarón injects vitality into Roma’ s mostly still takes with a series of long takes that see Cleo cleaning the house, running through the city and, ultimately, facing death by drowning before rescuing the children. Her children, and her own child who never was.

Roma is a complex cinematic work that merits various revisits and calls for multiple readings (formal, ethical, social, cultural). This paper is but one possible approximation to understanding how images, sounds and ideas are brought together by Cuarón and his creative team, how different types of fluids are used to construct the material reality of the film, but also to communicate its ideological and political underpinnings. 25

Cleo on the brink of death by drowning.

This article has been peer reviewed.

• Peter Travers, “ Roma Review: Alfonso Cuaron Makes His Masterpiece,” Rolling Stone , 19 November 2018, https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-reviews/roma-movie-review-758113/ ↩
• This word is commonly used to describe Mexico City natives. ↩
• Just like, say, Diego Rivera’s “Fresco Showing the Building of a City”. ↩
• Melissa W. Wright, “Necropolitics, narcopolitics, and femicide: gendered violence on the Mexico-US border,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 36.3 (2011): p. 709. ↩
• Ibidem, p. 710. ↩
• Jorge Fons’ Rojo Amanecer ( Red Dawn , 1990) offers a claustrophobic account of the massacre, which has shaped Mexican political identity for decades. ↩
• There is a clear wink to Fellini’s 8 ½ (1963). As Cleo is being rushed to the hospital by the family’s grandmother and their personal driver, they are stuck in traffic (a common feature of everyday life in Mexico City). Drivers and passengers from the nearby vehicles stare at them, much like in Guido Anselmi’s feverish nightmare. Furthermore, the scene in which paramilitary forces are being trained by a Mexican strongman/ luchador reminds us of Anthony Quinn’s Zampano in La Strada . ↩
• Jessica M. Vasquez, “Blurred borders for some but not ‘others’: Racialization, ‘flexible ethnicity,’ gender, and third-generation Mexican American identity,” Sociological Perspectives 53, no. 1 (2010): pp. 45-71. ↩
• Mónica G Moreno Figueroa, “Distributed intensities: Whiteness, mestizaje and the logics of Mexican racism,” Ethnicities 10, no. 3 (2010): pp. 387-401 ↩
• Staff, “¿Cuántos indígenas viven actualmente en México?,” Milenio Digital , 9 August 2017, http://www.milenio.com/cultura/cuantos-indigenas-viven-actualmente-en-mexico ↩
• Jacqueline Fortes De Leff, “Racism in Mexico: Cultural Roots and Clinical Interventions 1.” Family Process 41, no. 4 (2002): p. 619. ↩
• Emily Hind, “Post-NAFTA Mexican Cinema, 1998-2002,” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 23 (2004): p.104 ↩
• A contested geopolitical term that was used by Latin American technocrats in the 1970s and 1980s. I prefer the terms “Global North” or “Developed economies” but am using “First World” to echo the sentiment of the times. ↩
• Adrián Guillermo Aguilar, “Peri-urbanization, illegal settlements and environmental impact in Mexico City,” Cities 25.3 (2008): pp. 133-145. ↩
• Examples of the use of water and other liquids as metaphor are numerous in film history. A holistic view of these, however, is beyond the scope of this paper (we can think of Stanley Kubrick’s legendary blood tide scene in 1980’s The Shining , for example). ↩
• McKenzie Wark, “Fury Road,” Public Seminar , 22 May 2015, http://www.publicseminar.org/2015/05/fury-road/#.VXGpcKy3PFr ↩
• There is an extensive literature about the way that cinema captures and shows weather. See, for example: Emil Leth Meilvang, “Cinema, meteorology, and the erotics of weather,”  NECSUS. European Journal of Media Studies  7, no. 1 (2018): 67-85; Kristi McKim, Cinema as Weather: Stylistic Screens and Atmospheric Change (New York: Routledge, 2013); Eduardo Urios-Aparisi, “Stormy Weather: An Intercultural Approach to the Water Metaphor in Cinema” in  Embodied Metaphors in Film, Television, and Video Games , Kathrin Fahlenbrach, ed. (New York: Routledge, 2015), pp. 81-95. ↩
• Pamela Katz, “Directing Dickens: Alfonso Cuaron’s Great Expectations ” in Dickens on Screen , John Glavin, ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 99. ↩
• We can witness the real-life effects of the Bolivian water crisis in Icíar Bollaín’s Tambi én la lluvia ( Even the Rain , 2010), a film about the privatization of resources. ↩
• June Nash, “Consuming Interests: Water, Rum, and Coca‐Cola from Ritual Propitiation to Corporate Expropriation in Highland Chiapas,” Cultural Anthropology 22.4 (2007): p. 621-639. ↩
• Manohla Dargis, “ Roma Review: Alfonso Cuarón’s Masterpiece of Memory,” The New York Times , 20 November 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/movies/roma-review.html ↩
• Lubezki is a powerful artisan in Hollywood by his own right and has worked with the likes of Tim Burton in Sleepy Hollow , Terrence Malick in The Tree of Life , Knight of Cups and Song to Song , and Alejandro González Iñárritu in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and The Revenant ↩
• James Udden, “Child of the Long Take: Alfonso Cuaron’s Film Aesthetics in the Shadow of Globalization,” Style 43.1 (2009): pp. 26-44. ↩
• Lubezki had previous commitments that prevented him for working on the film. ↩
• This article was sent to peer-reviewers before Mexican director and Cuarón’s collaborator Guillermo Del Toro released ten points concerning his reading on the film on Twitter. In this thread, he highlights the use of water imagery in the film: “1) The opening shot suggests that earth (the shit-infested ground) and heaven (the plane) are irreconcilably far even if they are joined -momentarily- and revealed, by water (the reflection). All truths in ROMA are revealed by water.” The thread can be read here: https://twitter.com/RealGDT/status/1084701184110153729 ↩

Roma is Netflix’s monochrome movie masterpiece, and worth revisiting

Revisiting one of the streamer's best movies

Sometimes, you’ve got to mix things up. You wouldn’t spend the rest of your days eating at the same restaurant every week or listening to one track on repeat (unless it’s the TechRadar podcast , then we’d understand), so why settle for uniformity when it comes to filmmaking? 

Sure, gun-toting, sky-diving, supervillain-crushing action hero flicks are great, but it’s refreshing to find a movie that challenges everything you thought you enjoyed about cinema. Especially when it's on service you've already got in your home. 

Thankfully, Netflix is all for variety, and the world’s most popular streaming platform has invested in storytelling from all walks of life – and all corners of the globe – to offer subscribers an Aladdin's cave of choice. Roma, Alfonso Cuarón’s semi-autobiographical portrayal of a year in the life of a housekeeper in Mexico City, is one of those masterful movies hidden among the blockbusters.

You might remember the buzz around this black-and-white slow burner back at the 2019 Academy Awards. It took home the Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film, Best Cinematography and Best Director, and was lauded as one of those rare pictures that achieves a harmonious marrying of impressive performances, beautiful camerawork and a sense of social importance. It’s easy to roll your eyes at the pomp and circumstance of awards season and the critical jargon bandied around, but Roma really does deserve the praise heaped upon it – and warrants a revisit in 2021.

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Roma is a heartfelt, honest, and occasionally distressing experience that merits a big-screen rewatch – the curled-up, night-time laptop routine Netflix is famous for doesn’t entirely do Cuarón’s filmmaking justice. Back in 2019, we wrote an article on why you need to see Roma in a Dolby cinema , and though Covid-19 means there’s no chance of that happening any time soon, the sentiment remains the same. 

The story follows Cleo, in a compelling debut performance from Yalitza Aparicio, as she navigates the struggles of her own life as well as those of her employers, a middle-class family enduring the aftermath of a divorce. Cuarón never sensationalizes events, nor does he draw melodrama from dialling in on the individual emotions of his characters. Rather, his cinematography captures the necessary moments of emotion, humor and contextual unrest in equal measure, crafting a fascinating yet convincingly real picture of life in 1980s Mexico. 

Roma represents an emotional moment of reflection in the career of a director known for his affinity with science fiction – Cuarón counts Gravity and Children of Men among his credits – and proves a powerful watch for any admirer of cinema for its ability to beautify the seemingly-mundane. It occasionally risks self-indulgence, but Roma is a credit to its creator.

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It isn’t a quick watch, nor an easy one, but there are so many parts of Roma to admire on an audiovisual level. This is largely down to the director’s mastery of the camera. Cuarón is famed for his ability to transform the most monotonous of subjects into engaging pieces of filmmaking – remember the creepy playground in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, or the famous 6-minute single take from Children of Men? – and it's a skill no more evident than here. 

The opening sequence, for example, sees the camera focus on wet floor tiles which become – by virtue of the lens’ positioning – reflective of the sky above. Birds and planes cross the screen while the camera remains pointed to the floor, and the scene evolves into a dichotomy between the tedium of housework and the hustle of the outside world.

Cuarón likes to use this trick a few times – at least, he likes to linger by the ordinary at every opportunity. For the most part, this achieves the desired effect and undeniably confirms his gift for camerawork. Occasionally, his commitment to dazzling the viewer with technique wears slightly thin, but the personal nature of the project gives Cuarón license to experiment. 

Watching Roma is like having a guided tour through an art gallery. Everything you’re looking at is unquestionably beautiful, and though sometimes you wish things would move a little faster, it’s worth taking a moment to step back and appreciate the craft on show. 

The monochrome filter helps the movie in two ways. It gives the setting a timeless quality – the story could feasibly take place at any time in the last 50 years – which serves as a mechanism for emphasizing the ubiquitous issues of family turmoil as well as the monotony of domestic duties. 

It also underlines the fundamental power of the moving image. 10 minutes in, and the black and white film may as well become glorious technicolor. It’s an evidently-artsy move and won’t appeal to everyone, but it nevertheless differentiates Roma among the wimpish safety of mainstream cinema.

Yalitza Aparicio is fantastic in the lead role – it’s the emotion of her mannerisms and ability to dictate subtle facial changes that establish her as an exciting new talent. So too is Marina de Tavira excellent in her portrayal as the firm-but-fragile Sofía, the mother of four who is unexpectedly thrown into her role as head of the family. It all feels very real, which is, you would think, the point of any film – and it’s the performances that anchor this sense of authenticity. 

Ultimately, then, Roma is bold and brilliant, a masterful picture that succeeds almost without a hitch. Watch it for the first time. Watch it again. Then go back to the multiverse madness of Hollywood blockbusters.

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Axel is TechRadar's UK-based Phones Editor, reporting on everything from the latest Apple developments to newest AI breakthroughs as part of the site's Mobile Computing vertical. Having previously written for publications including Esquire and FourFourTwo, Axel is well-versed in the applications of technology beyond the desktop, and his coverage extends from general reporting and analysis to in-depth interviews and opinion.  Axel studied for a degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick before joining TechRadar in 2020, where he then earned an NCTJ qualification as part of the company’s inaugural digital training scheme.

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How tony roma’s is trying to make a comeback in the u.s..

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Tony Roma’s bbq and steak eateries have thinned out in the states but picked up internationally. ... [+] Pictured is its Anaheim, Calif. location.

At its heyday in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, Tony Roma’s, which specializes in baby back ribs, steaks and burgers, grew to 193 outlets. In many cities, there was always a Tony Roma, such as the one in the heart of Greenwich Village on 6 th Avenue near 8 th Street. Then it fell on hard times, and by 2024, it had dwindled to 86 locations, fewer than half of its former stable of eateries.

And it has moved, for the most part, overseas. Of its 86 locations, only10 are located in the U.S., which includes 2 in Los Angeles and 1 in Las Vegas. But most are in international locations including Berlin, Madrid, Tokyo, and Dubai. Every single outlet is franchised, and there are no company-owned eateries.

It was acquired by one of its international franchises, which purchased the whole company in 2021 during the pandemic. In June 2023, it named Mohaimina “Mina” Haque as CEO, a seasoned attorney with a particular emphasis in franchise law. She had previously served as outside general counsel at Tony Roma’s for three years. Her LinkedIn description says she is known for “driving growth and innovation.”

Haque attributes Tony Roma’s slowdown to a variety of factors including that “build-up costs were more than $3 million a location” and the pandemic led to numerous franchisees closing their eateries.

A ribs and steak specialist, Tony Roma’s, fell in hard times during the pandemic, especially domestically, and has a new CEO who is trying to revamp its menu and lower its costs for franchisees.

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Why Tony Roma’s Is Prospering Overseas

It’s held its own much better overseas, where it faces less competition with ribs than it has domestically, Haque indicates. Moreover, it has had loyal franchisees, as in Japan, who have been with the company since the late 1970’s. Hence, there’s been considerable franchisee interest in South America, Asia and Europe. “In the U.S.,” she says, “a lot of restaurants are innovating and keeping up with the trends.”

Haque says she has spent the last year studying the challenges Tony Roma’s faces in a changing restaurant industry and “implementing targeted solutions.” She points out two of them: 1) Examining every aspect of its operations to identify inefficiencies, reduce costs and enhance productivity, 2) Adapting to changing consumer preferences.

One Key: Lower Costs

To lower costs, it redesigned it model, modernized it, hired new suppliers at lower fees and created more options for franchisees to limit expenditures. Now it’s new franchise cost is about $1.7 million, down from $3 million.

It’s former, lengthy menu “would look cool back then but it’s not cool anymore,” she admits. Consumers, she points out, are “more health-conscious and dining out isn’t about having a huge portion of food, but it’s more about the experience.”

Nonetheless, its menu of onion loaf, baby back ribs, Memphis burgers and steak remains at the core of the menu. But she hints that the menu is in the midst of undergoing revamping and is exploring adding cauliflower ribs as an alternative, and it already offers several salads for those who are more health-conscious

Why Moderate Growth Works

Haque also thinks that moderate growth, not fast expansion, is one of the methods to ensure Tony Roma’s path to bouncing back. She expects only two more openings in 2024, which she acknowledges, is modest but part of its stable growth plan.

Its growth will depend on franchising. In fact, it’s opening two new Tony Roma’s in Kimball, Tn, and in Great Falls, Montana. Kimball is a small mountainous town with few fine casual dine-in options, she explains. And its Montana location will be situated inside of a hotel and casino, mirroring its Las Vegas location.

Haque explains that “we still have customer loyalty in these smaller towns, where they view Tony Roma’s as the place to have a celebration for a prom, proposal, special occasion or share a significant milestone.”

At the same time, she says that it’s starting to explore opening a location in Times Square as an opportunity to get its name out there again, in strong media circles, as Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers has done by opening in the middle of the Broadway theatre district.

If Tony Roma’s is going to expand in the U.S., it needs to connect better with millennials and Gen Zers, Haque suggests. “We need to get them excited, and marketing and PR play a major role, in that effort, especially social media,” she indicates.

A QSR Option

It also launched Bones and Burgers in Tampa, Fl., which functions as its only QSR/fast casual concept with a menu that favor burgers, ribs, chicken fingers and bowls. It’s looking to expand that footprint in 2024.

Bones and Burgers can operate in “food courts, movie theatres, college campuses, airports, sports venues or as free-standing locations,” she explains. It serves ribs and burgers, and most fast-casuals, don’t offer both.

This QSR option enables franchisees to get involved with Tony Roma’s with a smaller footprint, lower start-up costs, and allowing it to reach a wider net of potential franchisees, she says.

Haque was the attorney who served as general counsel for Tony Roma’s and many attorneys move into the CEO role. She says that attorneys are “very meticulous with data, and like to get into nitty-gritty details.”

About its future, Haque says “We need to make sure we revamp our menu and brand. We still have a lot of work to be done.”

Asked the keys for Tony Roma’s to bounce back from its doldrums, Haque says: 1) Increasing awareness among Gen Zers and millennials; 2) Opening a store in a major metropolis like New York City to build brand awareness; 3) Solidifying its gains to accelerate expansion.

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Metacritic reviews

• 100 IndieWire Eric Kohn IndieWire Eric Kohn Roma is by far the most experimental storytelling in a career filled with audacious (and frequently excessive) gimmicks. Here, he tables the showiness of “Children of Men” and “Gravity” in favor of ongoing restraint, creating a fresh kind of intimacy. Like a grand showman working overtime to tone things down, he lures viewers into an apparently straightforward scene, only to catch them off guard with new information.
• 100 The Telegraph Robbie Collin The Telegraph Robbie Collin Every individual scene feels filled with the lucid detail of a formative recollection or a recurring dream.
• 100 The Hollywood Reporter Todd McCarthy The Hollywood Reporter Todd McCarthy Roma may not be the memoir film many might have expected from such an adventurous, sometimes raunchy, sci-fi/fantasy-oriented filmmaker, but it’s absolutely fresh, confident, surprising and rapturously beautiful.
• 100 The Guardian Peter Bradshaw The Guardian Peter Bradshaw At times it feels novelistic, a densely realised, intimate drama giving us access to domestic lives developing in what feels like real time. In its engagingly episodic way, it is also at times like a soap opera or telenovela. And at other times it feels resoundingly like an epic.
• 100 Time Stephanie Zacharek Time Stephanie Zacharek This glorious, tender picture, a memoir written in film language, is only indirectly about the man who made it. He stands off to the side, in the shadows, beckoning us toward something. Roma is filmmaking as gesture, an invitation to generosity that we perhaps didn’t know we could feel.
• 100 New York Magazine (Vulture) Emily Yoshida New York Magazine (Vulture) Emily Yoshida Cuarón never seeks a tidy resolution for their loving, lopsided, complicated relationship. But it’s one of the reasons why Roma leaves such a deep and lasting impression.
• 92 TheWrap Alonso Duralde TheWrap Alonso Duralde Alfonso Cuarón has created a heartfelt masterpiece of mood and nostalgia, one that reminds us that his gifts as a storyteller and an interpreter of the human experience are not dictated by scale of production.
• 91 The Playlist Jessica Kiang The Playlist Jessica Kiang This is personal filmmaking taken to such an extremely minute level that at times it can almost feel prurient, like we’re accidentally eavesdropping on things too private for our ears, like we’ve intercepted an embrace sent back through time and not really meant for us at all.
• 80 CineVue John Bleasdale CineVue John Bleasdale Alfonso Cuarón returns to his childhood for inspiration with the meticulously beautiful Roma, an autobiographical black and white thank you letter full of warmth and love.
• 70 Variety Owen Gleiberman Variety Owen Gleiberman Roma is no mere movie — it’s a vision, a memory play that unfolds with a gritty and virtuosic time-machine austerity. It’s a Proustian reverie, dreamed and designed down to the last street corner and scuffed piece of furniture. Yet I actually think it’s far from a masterpiece, because as a viewing experience it has a slightly hermetic coffee-table-book purity. Every moment comes at you in the same methodically objective and caressing Zen way.
• See all 50 reviews on Metacritic.com
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The Significance Behind the Movies That Pop Up in Roma

Roma is a movie built on memories, specifically the memories of its writer-director, Alfonso Cuarón, even if the film is not his story. Instead, he lets the focus falls on Cleo ( Yalitza Aparicio ), a character inspired by Libo Rodriguez, the Cuarón family’s live-in housekeeper and nanny who helped raise him. But Cuarón brings to it a sense of detail drawn from a deep well of childhood memories, from the car that doesn’t quite fit in the carport to a radio station’s “Beatles vs. Credence” programming, to comic books, to — of course — the movies.

However incidentally, the Netflix-distributed film that’s inspired the most passionate debate yet about whether it should be seen in theaters or will play just as well at home contains two memorable trips to the movies, excursions to the lush movie palaces and packed houses of Cuarón’s youth. And both feature snippets of films that would have played in the years in which the film takes place, 1970 and 1971.

But why these films? And do they have any particular significance to Cuarón’s work? As Roma hits Netflix — while still playing in some theaters, so it’s not too late to see it as Cuarón would rather you see it — let’s consider what significance they might have had for the director.

La Grande Vadrouille (France, 1966)

There’s an excellent chance you’ve never heard of Gérard Oury’s 1966 comedy La Grande Vadrouille , especially if you’re not French. In France, however, it’s an institution, and it currently ranks as the country’s fifth-highest-grossing film of all time , nested between Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Gone With the Wind .

Oury was a Jewish actor turned director who’d fled France for Monaco at the outbreak of World War II. He began his directorial career at the age of 40 but found limited success helming dramas. When he switched to comedy, however, his luck changed. His 1964 film Le Corniaud became a huge hit, thanks in part to the teaming of stars Bourvil (one name, like Cher) and Louis de Funès. That set the stage for La Grande Vadrouille , a film that reunites the leads of Le Corniaud and balances potentially edgy subject matter with a generous spirit.

Bourvil plays a bumbling house painter and de Funès plays a snooty conductor — men from different worlds who ordinarily have no business with each other. World War II, however, changes that when a trio of British RAF paratroopers accidentally land in Nazi-occupied Paris. With the help of other patriotic Parisians and, later, a provincial nun, their characters work to help the Brits escape to unoccupied France.

La Grande Vadrouille played the U.S. a few years later under the title Don’t Look Now … We’re Being Shot At! , but never stirred much of an interest among moviegoers or critics, neither an easy sell when it comes to broad comedies from other countries. (Writing this piece involved tracking down a DVD from South Korea.) But it clearly made an impression on Cuarón, and it’s not hard to see why. Very much in the style of other big-budget ’60s comedies, it features vivid performances and a bunch of memorable comic setpieces pitting obvious good guys against sneering bad guys. It’s funny and safe, the sort of film in which Nazis can be warded off with pumpkins thrown from the back of a truck — and even then nobody gets hurt.

Both La Grande Vadrouille and Roma are nostalgic for awful times, even if only Cuarón’s acknowledges that uneasy mix of emotions. The France of La Grande Vadrouille is beautiful and filled with characters who don’t think twice about risking their lives to stand up to their Nazi oppressors. Released just over 20 years after the end of World War II, the film found an audience that still remembered the wounds of the war and sought to salve them with a light comedy. Roma is filled with affection for times gone by, but it also graphically acknowledges the terror of living in an era in which government oppression and political unrest could lead to blood in the streets.

Or maybe La Grande Vadrouille ’s role is just this: In Roma , we see the film’s final moments, a madcap rush for the border involving gliders and a cross-eyed Nazi gunman. In the audience, a couple makes out without paying the movie any mind as Cleo tells her boyfriend something that’s been on her mind. Above, the movie tells a story with a happy ending. Below life is more complicated.

Marooned (U.S., 1969)

The second film has a much more direct connection to Cuarón and his work, one he’s spoken of frequently. “I watched the Gregory Peck movie Marooned over and over when I was a kid,” Cuarón told Wired in 2013, while talking about his then-new film Gravity . The debt is obvious: Gravity is the story of astronauts who, thanks to a technical malfunction, find themselves stranded in orbit and forced to use their wits to find a way back to Earth as the cruel physics of space travel threaten their lives. Marooned is, well, pretty much that too, at least in broad strokes.

Released in November 1969, a year after Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and a few months after the moon landing, the film adapts a 1964 novel by Martin Caidin, a prolific writer who also wrote the novel that inspired The Six-Million Dollar Man. John Sturges ( The Magnificent Seven , Ice Station Zebra ) directs with an eye toward the nuts-and-bolts details of space exploration. When a trio of fatigued astronauts (played by Richard Crenna, James Franciscus, and a twitchily commanding Gene Hackman) are ordered back early from a months-long stay aboard a space station, they find themselves unable to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere. Meanwhile, NASA, headed by a gruff Gregory Peck, scrambles to rescue them before their air supply runs out.

Marooned won an Academy Award for its special effects, which remain quite impressive. But it didn’t find much traction at the box office, or with critics. Howard Thompson’s assessment for the New York Times , for instance, praises many elements of the film but still uses words like “antiseptic” and “workmanlike.” That’s not entirely unfair. The film hopes that audiences will be as enthralled with beeping control consoles and zero-gravity effects as they were with 2001 , but the story, by design, is much more prosaic. It works as a solid space-age drama. But it’s also filled with the long pauses and lurching action that allowed it to serve as fodder for an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 , too.

Still, it’s easy to see how it could get its hooks into the mind of a young Cuarón, and how he could use it as raw material for a richer, more kinetic film years later. It’s also easy see the role it plays in Roma , a journey through the past that suggests what’s remembered — be it a moment of passion, a heartbreak, or a movie seen long ago — never really dies.

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What is ‘Roma’ About, Explained

Despite being only eight films old in the industry, Alfonso Cuaron commands the rare reverence afforded to greats like Spielberg and Scorcese. The Mexican filmmaker started his career with ‘Solo con Tu Pareja’, a Spanish language film about two victims of love, who find solace in each other. It opened to positive reviews and was fairly successful at the box office. Cuaron has since attracted critical and commercial success with films like ‘Gravity’, ‘Children of Men’, and ‘Prisoners of Azkaban’. ‘Roma’, though, is the crown jewel of Cuaron’s filmography and essentially inks the year to his name.

‘Roma’ is a semi-biographical account of Cuaron’s childhood in a middle-class, white family in Mexico. It revolves around the central figure of Cleo, the selfless, devoted “manita” in a posh-house, based on Libo, Cuaron’s real-life nanny. The title “Roma” refers to the Colonia Roma, a neighborhood in Mexico City.

Cuaron first played with the idea of making a film about his childhood in the Roma neighborhood in 2006 after ‘Children of Men’. The project was shelved by Cuaron for quite some time as he struggled to coalesce the emotions of his memories. His intimate involvement in the story prompted prolonged contemplation on the idea of its portrayal in the film. In an interview with  Variety ,  Cuaron refers to the works of Argentinian writer Jorge Borges and says, “Borges talks about how memory is an opaque, shattered mirror, but I see it more as a crack in the wall. The crack is whatever pain happened in the past. We tend to put several coats of paint over it, trying to cover that crack. But it’s still there”.

‘Roma’ is set in the year 1970 in Mexico City amidst political and social unrest in the country. The story focuses on a middle-class, white Mexican family and the domestic help of the household, Cleo. Although Cleo’s title only designates her as the housemaid, she is like a second mother of the children, who greatly value her friendship and affection. The couple, Antonio and Sofia, constantly quarrel, resulting in Antonio leaving the house on the premise of visiting a conference in Quebec. It is later revealed that he is having an affair, resulting in a divorce.

Meanwhile, Cleo’s personal life presents the promise of a great future. She begins dating the quiet and peculiar Fermin, who has a special interest in martial arts and further strengthens her bonds with the kids. When she is blessed with a pregnancy and tells Firmin about it, he leaves her and runs away. Her employer, Sofia takes her to the hospital for a checkup. Sofia and the kids, accompanied by Cleo, go to a friend’s  hacienda to celebrate the New Year. While the final moments of the year wear down, a fire breaks out in the woods nearby. The whole group, along with the workers of the house, reach the spot and try to put out the fire. After Cleo comes back, she decides to visit Fermin and confront him about the situation. She takes a bus to the village where he stays. Ramon takes her to Fermin’s training area, where Fermin threatens Cleo to never contact him again, insults her, and leaves.

“I didn’t want her. I didn’t want her to be born”.

Cleo goes shopping for a crib with Sofia’s mother, Teresa. They barely make their way through the huge crowds of students protesting on the streets. Inside the shop, the mob grows violent and starts chasing people around. One such encounter happens right in front of Cleo, who witnesses a murder. She then herself faces the barrel, with none other than Fermin wielding the gun. Her water breaks and long traffic cues hold her up. She delivers a stillborn child, holding her for a few moments before letting her go.

After Sofia and Antonio’s divorce finalizes, she takes the kids and Cleo to the beach, allowing Antonio to gather his things. As they prepare to leave, they make one last visit to the beach. Sofia leaves the kids alone with Cleo, whose momentary lapse of concentration sees two of the kids struggle to swim back. Despite not knowing how to swim, Cleo risks her life to save the kids. She then breaks down and acknowledges her desire for her daughter to have never been born. The family unites with her in an emotional moment. As they go back, Antonio’s things are gone, leaving the house empty. Cleo goes to the terrace as a plane flies in the background, like the first scene.

Political and Historical Significance

‘Roma’, in the words of director Alfonso Cuaron, is a “reconstruction of memory, of the past, through the prism of the present”. It was shot in the same places and spaces where Cuaron grew up, which gives a great authenticity to the film. The personal nature of the film for Cuaron also extended to the Mexico of the ’70s. The  Dirty War   had thrown the political landscape of the country into turmoil. Insurgent guerilla groups and the incumbent administration converted the streets if Mexico into a battlefield, claiming the lives of many people. Cuaron captured the  Corpus Christi Massacre ,  where hundreds of student demonstrators were killed, in the exact moment it happened in history. The ‘Crib Shopping’ sequence has attracted universal attention for its detailed retelling of the events as they happened, but also the fear that escalated in the people.

The shot of the clocks indicates the exact time the aggression became uncontrollable and the violence broke out. Cuaron and other members of the crew have admitted the difficulty they experienced while shooting. Cinematically, the shot qualifies as an unheralded masterpiece, with its slow, aching camera movements and the perfectly orchestrated extras. The emotion truly spills over to the viewer with a hard-hitting sense of reality and melancholy. The events form an important part of the Mexican political fabric. Cuaron’s honesty in the portrayal of the events. with the backing of the crew, add another dimension to his beautifully moving drama.

Cleo: A Feminist Metaphor

In an interview to  Variety ,  Cuaron admitted that Cleo was an uncompromisable part of the film. Without her presence, his memories could not have been resuscitated back to life. Her character acts as an anchor not only to the central narrative of the film, but also the family she is an undeniable part of. Without her warmth, patience, and selfless devotion, the kinship would have collapsed, especially after Antonia separates from Sofia. Cleo becomes the invisible shield for the children and their grieving mother, protecting them with a resolve so strong, it could bare fireballs from the sky. The revolting nature of her compassionate constancy for the family even upend mighty ocean waves, despite not knowing how to swim.

Contemporary left-ideology places Cleo as the perfect role model for girls and women around the world. She is, as a German would say, an  Alleskönner.  Right from cleaning after the mess the children create, to comfort them to sleep, Cleo shoulders the gulf of responsibilities in the house. Due to the tumultuous relationship between Sofia and Antonio, the former remains depressed and irritable. Sofia’s emotional investment in Antonio prevents her from spending time with the kids and playing the role she ought to as a mother. Cleo emerges as a motherly-figure whom the kids adore and revere. She provides calmness and warmth in the kids’ life. Cleo’s personal life also creates hurdles for her. She is abandoned by Fermin when she conceives. When her water breaks, the traffic and ensuing violence hold her up, resulting in a stillborn child.

Despite these major emotional and psychological setbacks, Cleo stands like a rock between the world and the children she construes as her own. Cuaron revealed that she brought the real-life Cleo, his nanny Libo to the sets. While filming those tough scenes, Libo started crying, which Cuaron initially misconstrued as an intrusion in her personal memories. But when he asked her the reason, she said the pain of the children seeing their parents separate and fight made her emotional. Libo’s love for the kids reflects in Cleo’s intimacy on screen. The performance by Yalitza Aparicio assumes the form of myth almost, considering that she isn’t an actress by profession. Her stunning turn is undoubtedly one of the best performances of the year.

Cuaron’s Important Set Pieces

‘Roma’ features some of the most haunting scenes ever recorded on celluloid. The beauty of their interpretation lies in the variable meaning behind these scenes. The ‘Forest Fire’ scene is completely devoid of any significance to the film, while the ‘Crib Buying’ or climax scene holds great stead in the film’s narrative. I feel it is essential to dissect and discuss some of Cuaron’s brilliant set-pieces from the film. I’ve picked three such scenes, ‘Forest Fire’, ‘Training’, and ‘Delivery’.

Forest Fire

When the family and Cleo go to their friend’s house to celebrate New Year’s, an unexpected fire breaks out. The celebrations are cut short, forcing the occupants to control the fire before it becomes fatal. Irrespective of their class or status, guests, hosts, and workers alike collaborate and do their best to extinguish the fire. In the midst of all this, we see a man wearing an animal suit singing a song taking the center stage. As I see it, the scene is a random moment drawn from Cuaron’s memory of the night. As the film itself is told from a “looking back” perspective, the moment must hold some special significance for the filmmaker. The poetic expression of the shot is similar to that of Tarkovsky’s, which really elevates the film. It is the coexistence of harshness and beauty of life as the fire blazed contrasted against the majesty of song.

Martial Arts Training

Cuaron’s creation of movement in this scene is special and deserves a mention. In an almost Kurusawaesque manner, Cuaron captures the essence of action and its latent meaning with seamless perfection. There are three things which the scene brings out. One of the overarching themes was the absent masculine, which contrasted with the present feminine in the scene with Fermin and Antonio before that. Secondly, the notion of class manipulation manifests itself in the form of regulated extremism. Fermin’s poor background implies that the void poverty creates compels people more easily to be co-opted and recruited by the forces of violence and fanaticism. It conveys how poverty fractures the fundamental makeup of society as a whole. Lastly, Cuaron also comments on the idea of blind adulation and mythification of figures in popular culture. Professor Zovek’s presence spellbound those in the audience. When one of his impossible poses is successfully imitated by Cleo but not by the trained disciples, Cuaron implies the subjugation of the sense of the latter by Zovek and people like him.

One of the most emotional and gritty movie scenes of recent times. The protests and violence hold up Cleo and delay her delivery. Although she is taken to the operation room for surgery, she births a stillborn girl. After many attempts of resuscitation, the doctors finally give up. Cleo holds her for the first and last time with tears in her eyes and the heart pounding out of her chest. The stillness of the camera provides the viewer almost a first-hand experience of this brutal event. The visceral energy almost pierces the screen to humanize Cleo’s pain and anguish.

By the time the movie ends, Antonio and Sofia’s divorce becomes official. In a bid to make the separation easier for the children, she plans a trip to Tuxpan, the duration of which Antonio utilizes to clear out his things. Cleo accompanies the family, hoping to overcome the loss of her child. As they prepare to return and visit the beach for one last time, Sofi and Paco get caught in the waves. Cleo, who does not know how to swim, runs to their rescue, thereby risking her own life. After she does so successfully, she breaks down, surrounded by the family. They console her and remind Cleo that she is indeed a part of their family. Life continues with normalcy when they return and Cleo wakes a new morning for a fresh start.

The ending of ‘Roma’ is rather unexpected. The last set-piece in Cuaron’s gorgeous arthouse powerhouse is the first time when we see Cleo’s resilience and strength wear down. Throughout the movie, Cleo comes up against adverse situations. Both her personal and professional lives suffer as a consequence. The affectation seeing children she treats as her own devastated due to their parent’s separation, and her own little child’s death, have a devastating effect on her. After being so near to death and the premise of losing  her  children, Cleo clears her conscience and confesses she didn’t want her child to be born. In my opinion, the family’s situation had an impact on Cleo. Without their father, the children missed a paternal figure in their lives; without her loving husband, Sofia missed a compassionate companion. Cleo didn’t want to suffer the same fate as Sofia and her to-be-born girl.

The very last scene of the film has Cleo carrying on with her daily chores as a plane is seen flying above her. If you remember, the first scene of the film also has a reflection of plane flying above. The distance of the plane from the earth metaphorically represents the class divide that exists in the world. The plane and the earth can only become one in water’s reflection – but not in reality. Similarly, even if Cleo saves the children and is an integral part of the family, the chasm that separates people like Cleo from the upper echelons of society will remain … until of course we do something about it.

Cuaron’s earnest, contemplative, and deliberate reconstruction of memory is beyond moving. With almost a novella-styled screenplay, ‘Roma’ unfurls with infectious grace and carries its palpable emotional fabric with great care. ‘Roma’s compassionate, beating heart is its ordinary and selfless protagonist Cleo, whose extraordinary spirit of life makes Cuaron’s story the most compelling of the year 2018.

Read More in Explainers: Green Book |  ‘A Star is Born’ | ‘Birdman’

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Gena Rowlands, acting powerhouse and star of movies by her director-husband, John Cassavetes, dies

Gena Rowlands, acting powerhouse and star of John Cassavetes movies, has passed away aged 94. Her death was confirmed by her son, filmmaker Nick Cassavetes. (Aug. 15)

FILE - Actor Gena Rowlands poses for a portrait at the London West Hollywood hotel in West Hollywood, Calif., on Dec. 4, 2014. Rowlands, hailed as one of the greatest actors to ever practice the craft and a guiding light in independent cinema as a star in groundbreaking movies by her director husband, John Cassavetes, and later charmed audiences in her son’s tear-jerker “The Notebook,” has died at age 94. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - U.S. director Nick Cassavetes, son of director John Cassavetes, center back, poses with his sister Xan Cassavetes, from left, his daughter Gena Cassavetes, his mother Gena Rowlands, and his sister Zoe, before the screening of his film “The Notebook” on Sept. 5, 2004, at the 30th American film Festival of Deauville, in Normandy. (AP Photo/Franck Prevel, File)

FILE - Actress Gena Rowlands attends the world premiere of ‘My Sister’s Keeper’ on Wednesday, June 24, 2009 in New York. Rowlands, hailed as one of the greatest actors to ever practice the craft and a guiding light in independent cinema as a star in groundbreaking movies by her director husband, John Cassavetes, and later charmed audiences in her son’s tear-jerker “The Notebook,” has died at age 94. (AP Photo/Evan Agostini, File)

FILE - Actress Gena Rowlands and actor Beau Bridges hold up their Emmys for Best Actress and Best Actor for Miniseries or Special during the 44th Annual Emmy Awards in Pasadena, Calif., Aug. 30, 1992. Rowlands received the Emmy for “Face Of A Stranger” and Bridges for “Without Warning: The James Brady Story.” (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac, File)

FILE - Gena Rowlands, left, and Robert Forrest attend the Governors Ball after the Oscars on Sunday, Feb. 28, 2016, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Al Powers/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - U.S. actress Gena Rowlands waves to the crowd as she arrives at the Festival Palace in Cannes Tuesday May 23, 1995, to attend the screening of Terence Davies’ “The Neon Bible” for the 48th International Film Festival. Rowlands, hailed as one of the greatest actors to ever practice the craft and a guiding light in independent cinema as a star in groundbreaking movies by her director husband, John Cassavetes, and later charmed audiences in her son’s tear-jerker “The Notebook,” has died at age 94. (AP Photo/Laurent Rebours, File)

FILE - Actor Gena Rowlands poses for a photo in Los Angeles on Sept. 21, 1957. Rowlands, hailed as one of the greatest actors to ever practice the craft and a guiding light in independent cinema as a star in groundbreaking movies by her director husband, John Cassavetes, and later charmed audiences in her son’s tear-jerker “The Notebook,” has died at age 94. (AP Photo/Dick Strobel, File)

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Gena Rowlands, hailed as one of the greatest actors to ever practice the craft and a guiding light in independent cinema as a star in groundbreaking movies by her director husband, John Cassavetes, and who later charmed audiences in her son’s tear-jerker “The Notebook,” has died. She was 94.

Rowlands’ death was confirmed Wednesday by representatives for her son, filmmaker Nick Cassavetes. He revealed earlier this year that his mother had Alzheimer’s disease . TMZ reported that Rowlands died Wednesday at her home in Indian Wells, California.

Operating outside the studio system, the husband-and-wife team of John Cassavetes and Rowlands created indelible portraits of working-class strivers and small-timers in such films as “A Woman Under the Influence,” “Gloria” and “Faces.”

Rowlands made 10 films across four decades with Cassavetes, including “Minnie and Moskowitz” in 1971, “Opening Night” in 1977 and “Love Streams” in 1984.

She earned two Oscar nods for two of them: 1974’s “A Woman Under the Influence,” in which she played a wife and mother cracking under the burden of domestic harmony, and “Gloria” in 1980, about a woman who helps a young boy escape the mob.

“He had a particular sympathetic interest in women and their problems in society, how they were treated and how they solved and overcame what they needed to, so all his movies have some interesting women, and you don’t need many,” she told the AP in 2015.

In addition to the Oscar nominations, Rowlands earned three Primetime Emmy Awards, one Daytime Emmy and two Golden Globes. She was awarded an honorary Academy Award in 2015 in recognition of her work and legacy in Hollywood. “You know what’s wonderful about being an actress? You don’t just live one life,” she said at the podium. “You live many lives.”

A new generation was introduced to Rowlands in her son’s blockbuster “The Notebook,” in which she played a woman whose memory is ravaged, looking back on a romance for the ages. Her younger self was portrayed by Rachel McAdams. (She also appeared in Nick Cassavetes’ “Unhook the Stars” in 1996.)

In her later years, Rowlands made several appearances in films and TV, including in “The Skeleton Key” and the detective series “Monk.” Her last appearance in a movie was in 2014, playing a retiree who befriends her gay dance instructor in “Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks.”

One of her career triumphs was 1974’s “A Woman Under the Influence,” playing a lower middle-class housewife who, the actor said, “was totally vulnerable and giving; she had no sense of her own worth.” In “Gloria” (1980) she portrayed a faded showgirl menaced by her ex-boyfriend, a mobster boss. She was Oscar nominated as best actress for both performances.

She and Cassavetes met at the American School of Dramatic Arts when both their careers were beginning. They married four months later. In 1959 Cassavetes used his earnings from the TV series “Johnny Staccato” to finance his first film, “Shadows.” Partly improvised, shot with natural light on New York locations with a $40,000 budget, it was applauded by critics for its stark realism.

Gena (pronounced Jenna) Rowlands became a seasoned actor through live television drama and tours in “The Seven Year Itch” and “Time for Ginger” as well as off-Broadway.

Her big break came when Josh Logan cast her opposite Edward G. Robinson in Paddy Chayefsky’s play “Middle of the Night.” Her role as a young woman in love with her much older boss brought reviews hailing her as a new star.

Nick Cassavetes, son of director John Cassavetes, center back, poses with his sister Xan Cassavetes, from left, his daughter Gena Cassavetes, his mother Gena Rowlands, and his sister Zoe, before the screening of his film “The Notebook” in 2004. (AP Photo/Franck Prevel)

MGM offered her a contract for two pictures a year. Her first film, a comedy directed by and costarring Jose Ferrer, “The High Cost of Loving,” brought Rowlands comparisons to one of the great 1930s stars, Carole Lombard.

But she asked to be released from her contract because she was expecting a baby. Often during her career she would absent herself from the screen for long stretches to attend to family matters.

In addition to Nick, she and Cassavetes had two daughters, Alexandra and Zoe, who also pursued acting careers.

John Cassavetes died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1989, and Rowlands returned to acting to assuage her grief. Between assignments she sometimes attended film festivals and societies for Cassavetes screenings.

“I want everyone to see his films,” she said at the San Sebastian Festival in 1992. “John was one of a kind, the most totally fearless person I’ve ever known. He had a very specific view of life and the individuality of people.”

Virginia Cathryn Rowlands was born in 1930 (some sources give a later date) in Cambria, Wisconsin, where her Welsh ancestors had settled in the early 19th century. Her father was a banker and state senator. She was a withdrawn child who loved books and make-believe. Her mother encouraged the girl’s ambition to become an actor.

Rowlands quit the University of Wisconsin in her junior year to pursue an acting career in New York. Like other actors of her generation, she gained invaluable experience in the thriving field of television drama in the 1950s, appearing on all the major series.

After leaving her MGM contract, she was able to choose her film roles. When nothing attracted her, she appeared in TV series such as “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Bonanza,” “Dr. Kildare” and “The Virginian.” One of her career delights was co-starring with her icon Bette Davis on the TV movie “Strangers” in 1979.

Rowlands and actor Beau Bridges hold up their Emmys for best actress and actor for a miniseries or special in 1992. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)

Her other movies included “Lonely Are the Brave” with Kirk Douglas, “The Spiral Road” (Rock Hudson), “A Child Is Waiting” (with Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland, directed by Cassavetes), “Two Minute Warning” (Charlton Heston), “Tempest” (co-starring with Cassavetes and Molly Ringwald, in her screen debut) and the mother who wants to do right by her children in Paul Schrader’s 1987 study of a blue-collar family, “Light of Day.”

In middle age and beyond, Rowlands continued playing demanding roles. In Woody Allen’s austere drama “Another Woman” she was cast as a writer whose life has been shielded from emotion until dire incidents force her to deal with her feelings. In the groundbreaking TV movie “An Early Frost,” she appeared as a mother confronting her son’s AIDS.

Rowlands commented in 1992 that her roles remained in her memory.

“Sometimes, those white nights when I have no sleep and a lot of time to think about everything, I’ll examine different possibilities of different characters and what they might be doing now,” she said.

This story has been updated to correct the spelling of the television series “Johnny Staccato” and the release year for “Shadows.”

Film Writer Jake Coyle in New York contributed to this report. The late Associated Press writer Bob Thomas contributed biographical material to this report.

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‘Alien: Romulus’ Solidifies Disney’s Box Office Rebound

After struggling in recent years, Hollywood’s biggest movie company has now delivered four hits in a row, dominating the summer with a 42 percent market share.

By Brooks Barnes

Reporting from Los Angeles

“Alien: Romulus” was on pace to collect at least $42 million at theaters in the United States and Canada over the weekend, a strong total that solidified a turnaround at Disney’s movie division.

Disney’s seven movie factories — Marvel, Lucasfilm, Pixar, 20th Century, Searchlight Pictures, Disney Animation and Walt Disney Pictures — began to break down in 2021. They had been pushed too hard to make content for Disney’s streaming service. The pandemic added difficulties, resulting in a string of failures like “Jungle Cruise,” “Strange World,” “Lightyear,” “Haunted Mansion,” “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” “Nightmare Alley,” “The Marvels” and “Wish.”

Investors grew increasingly agitated , putting Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, and Alan Bergman, Disney’s top movie executive, under extreme pressure to deliver improved results. Movies carry unusual weight at the Walt Disney Company, which relies on them for much more than ticket revenue. At Disney, movies also power a vast consumer products division and underpin theme park attractions.

It certainly appears that Disney has regained its box office footing. So far this summer (from May 1 to Sunday), Disney films have accounted for 42 percent of total ticket sales in the United States and Canada, according to Box Office Mojo, a film database. Last summer, Disney had about a 27 percent market share.

With the successful release of “Alien: Romulus” (20th Century), the company has now delivered four consecutive hits. In May, Disney rolled out “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” a 20th Century movie that cost about $160 million to make and collected nearly $400 million worldwide. “Inside Out 2” (Pixar) arrived in June and has taken in $1.6 billion worldwide. In July, “Deadpool & Wolverine” (Marvel) set a record for the largest R-rated opening in Hollywood history, and has gone on to sell $1.1 billion in tickets.

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