ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROMA

MOVIE
ROMA
Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira
Director Alfonso Cuaron

Review Ray Chan

When movie critics get together, chances are they will talk about Roma. Alfonso Cuaron’s production has been lauded as the most beautiful cinematic release made in recent times, registering near universal acclaim on even the most hardened of review websites.

    Some point out that it’s more style than substance. Certainly, moviegoers will be immediately  enveloped in the sweeps employed by the Academy Award-winning director's visual technique, which brings a majesty to the widescreen that entices with its sheer lavishness and attention to detail.

    There’s just so much to see in every individual composition and each new vignette: a plane flies across the sky in the reflection of a window in soap suds; a panaromic span of a rural countryside reveals people going about their business while a circus performer is shot from a cannon; a family outing at a picnic carries us through to a scene where men and women alike participate in a spot of recreational shooting, guns clasped in hands like budding secret agents.

    Images are captured from angles that make each still a resplendent study of art, enhanced by the decision to shoot the movie in black and white, granting it that timeless quality and edge which work to snare the viewer’s attention.

    Time will tell if it’s a masterpiece with qualifying asterisks, or simply a masterwork, full stop. But for this reviewer, it casts a definite enchantment and describes a specific period, place and collection of Cuaron’s personal memories in ways that will resonate with millions.

    Taking place in 1970, the story is set in the Colonia Roma district where Cuaron grew up, during a period wracked by civil unrest. The era is also clearly stamped by a soundtrack of the times, from various Latin American favourites to the biggest English hit of the year in the country (Christie’s Yellow River), and references to Creedence and the Beatles.

    The picture is based around the nanny who helped raise Cuaron. The movie’s  version of that housekeeper, Cleo, is played wonderfully by newcomer Yalitza Aparicio, whose warm, loyal presence becomes the central focus.

    The maid looks after the household of Sofia (Marina De Tavira) in a middle-class adobe which accommodates four children, one grandmother, another servant, one regularly defecating canine, some caged birds and a husband who later absconds to Acapulco with his mistress. 

    Cleo eventually loses her virginity to a restive young man (Jorge Antonio Guerrero) devoted to martial-arts training and so disturbed by Cleo’s resultant pregnancy that he disowns mother and child.  A few days later, as the family spends New Year’s Eve with relatives in a country hacienda, a forest fire erupts, forcing the men to try and douse the flames as the women continue to sip their champagnes. Again, all this is told in slow, smart pans of the camera.

    Indeed, Roma drifts from incident to incident, involving earthquakes, street protests,  Cleo’s arrival at hospital to deliver the baby, where tragedy awaits, and a rescue that bonds the family and Cleo ever tighter. Cuaron’s technical prowess and profound artistic vision combine to ensure that, while we’re with Cleo every step of the way, we always get to see the streets, the countryside, the world around her, and other minutiae, suggesting many other stories yet to be told.

    With such powerful and breathtaking imagery, it’s easy to overlook the lack of an actual narrative in the movie. It’s basically a chapter in the life of a Mexican maid, but Cuaron has assuredly turned these adventures into a marvel of craft and one of the year’s very finest achievements.

   The use of water is a recurring device in the film, from the calming opening scenes of a floor being lathered, to rainy weather in the city, to Cleo’s pregnancy waters breaking, and culminating in the waves of a tempestuous sea. 

    Oceans often represent obstacles or abysses from which things emerge, or that characters must journey across to reach a destination. Water generally cleanses, however, and it inevitably becomes a symbol of characters handling difficult life scenarios. Both aspects are exemplified as Cleo and Sofia come to grips with their respective predicaments.

    Without a doubt, Roma rewards your time sublimely. It’s showing both in the theatres and also via Netflix on TV, but really, watching it on as wide an aspect ratio as possible maximises its grandeur. 

    Cuaron won an Oscar for directing Gravity, the movie about astronauts stranded in space. Co-written by Cuaron, it was inspired by the 1969 movie Marooned, to which homage is paid in one of the scenes from Roma. It’ll surely be no surprise to see this epic earn him another accolade at the 91st Academy Awards in February.

#roma  #cuaron