Roma
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Cast: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de
Tavira, Diego Cortina Autrey, Carlos Peralta
I loved this film!! It became for
me a close to portrayal of my own family domestic structure, although I didn’t
grow up in the Colonia Roma where the film takes place. Alfonso Cuarón's intensely
personal, dreamy black-and-white ode to his childhood in 1970's Mexico. It is a
profound act of empathy for his childhood housekeeper/nanny (as played by first
time actor Yalitza Aparicio), taking the story of one bourgeoisie family and
juxtaposing it with the revolutionary changes in the city at the time. The city
sequences are absolutely perfect, every detail is considered. The movie is
filled with comically inept or absent men, delicately choreographed long takes,
the intricacies of cleaning up dog poop, unforgettable set pieces (the New
Year's Eve party, the Corpus Christi Massacre), and the kind of lived-in
details that could only be drawn from memory. Some sequences like the one Cleo
is looking for her boyfriend reminded me of Fellini’s 8 ½. The movie, which
spans a tumultuous year in the family's life, sneaks up on you with a series of
moments, until the emotional weight of the entire thing crashes down on you
like the waves at Tuxpan in the climactic ocean scene.
The film is a technical craftsman
of the highest order, the Children of Men and Gravity director has an aesthetic
that aims to overwhelm -- with the amount of extras, the sense of despair, and
the constant whir of exhilaration. Cuarón's artful pans aren't just layered for
the sake of complexity: he's often placing different emotions, historical
concepts, and class distinctions in conversation with each other. What are
these different components in the painstakingly composed shots actually saying
to each other? The movie is filled with compositions like that, tinged with careful
ambiguity and unresolved tensions. I think is what I will call a greatly modest masterpiece.
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