Roma | Alfonso Cuarón | NYFF 2018
It’s been five years since Alfonso Cuarón released Gravity, but it becomes instantly clear that he took his time preparing and making Roma, a project that hits close to home for the Mexican director.
Roma is a semi-autobiographical take on Cuarón’s upbringing in the Colonia Roma neighborhood of Mexico City that is based on his own nanny and the impact she had on his life. In Roma, Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) is the live-in maid that lives in a well-off household in the Colonia Roma region of Mexico City. The family consists of Sofia (Marina de Tavira), the matriarch of the family, her mother Teresa (Verónica García), their four kids (Marco Graf, Daniela Demesa, Diego Cortina Autrey, and Carlos Peralta) and Sofia’s husband Antonio (Fernando Grediaga), who who spends more time traveling for work than he does at home with his family.
With Antonio gone, Cleo and another maid named Adela (Nancy García), have a double duty in the house not only to clean and keep it tidy but to act as a surrogate family member, if not all-ought replacing the father in many ways in the children’s daily life. Meanwhile, Cleo tries to find love with her new flame Fermín (Jorge Antonio Guerrero), who gets her pregnant. Upon learning of this news, Fermín freaks out and abandons her, having no interest in helping her raise the kid or being a part of her life.
This isn’t exactly an uplifting tale, but one grounded in reality and heartbreak, something that is so clearly near and dear to Cuarón who captures it all is his signature realistic fashion that is stunningly captured in black and white by himself as a cinematographer. The choice to film entirely in black and white is one that takes the viewer back in time and allows the film to operate as a slice of reality, seemingly so real it could play as a documentary.
This is incredibly due to the leading performance from Yalitza Aparicio, a non-actor who is actually a schoolteacher who caught their attention at an open casting. She is absolutely phenomenal in the role as the love-hungry but also totally compassionate Cleo who holds this family together in a time where it would be so easy for them to drift apart. Equally stunning is the support turn by Marina de Tavira as the mother whose job it is to keep her family together along with Cleo even though fate seems destined to do everything in its power to put them apart.
At 135-minutes, Roma may be too patient of a slow burn for many viewers who give this a chance on Netflix later this year. But for those who give in to its powers, they’ll be taken on a powerful journey of humanity and heartbreak, one that features so many of that signature Cuarón long-takes that will both dazzle and absolutely destroy you.
Roma is a powerful piece of cinema that shows you that at its core, all you need is a good story and a passionate director who knows how to bring it to life in a fruitful way that feels vital, essential and true.
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