Roma

Dir: Alfonso Cuarón

2018

*****

I’m struggling to think of a director as diverse as Alfonso Cuarón – all his films are impressive but I wouldn’t know they were made by the same person unless I was told. High quality visuals and an engaging story are about the only things they have in common, that and one stand out scene. I love a film that proudly wears that one big scene – give me one big scene over a film of little scenes any day of the week. Roma has around five of those stand out scenes. It had been five years since Cuarón’s spectacular Gravity and over a decade since the groundbreaking City of Children – add to that the fact that he also changed the direction of the Harry Potter films in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban which really lifted the series, it was time the director was allowed to embark on a very personal passion project. Roma is a semi-autobiographical take on Cuarón's upbringing in Mexico City in the early 1970s, and follows the life of a live-in housekeeper to a middle-class family. The title refers to the Colonia Roma district of the city. The fact that the great Federico Fellini made a film in much the same vein and with the same name (covering the directors early life and memories growing up in Italy’s capital city) would suggest it is a tribute to the master film maker, indeed, the film features many ‘tributes’ to directors and films favoured by Cuarón (the appearance of the great La Grande Vadrouille being my favorite). Some would suggest Cuarón had some gall following so brazenly in Fellini’s footsteps but I would argue that his Roma is just as good but also completely different. Cuarón  can however, be considered in the same league as Fellini and his Roma will be regarded as a classic on equil terms – I have no doubt. The film's events take place between 1970 and 1971, predominantly in the Colonia Roma neighborhood of Mexico City. Cleo (named after the Cléo character in Agnès Varda's Cléo from 5 to 7) is a maid in the household of Sofia. Sofia's household consists of her husband Antonio, their four young children, Sofia's mother, Teresa, and another maid, Adela. Antonio, is a busy doctor and the family seems to revolve around his infrequent visits home. It seems he is always on his way to a ‘conference in Quebec’ and it gradually comes clear that his relationship with Sofia is in trouble. The first quarter of the film is rather slow as we follow Cleo’s life cleaning, cooking, taking the kids to and from school, serving them meals, putting the kids to bed and waking them up and clearing up the dog poo of the family dog who no one seems to want. In their time off, Cleo and Adela go out with their boyfriends, Fermín and Ramón, to the theatre. At the entrance, Cleo and Fermín decide to go to the park (rent a room) instead of seeing the movie. Fermín, while naked, shows off his martial arts skill using the shower curtain rod as a pole. It was my wife’s favorite scene. At another date, both couples meet in a movie theatre to watch La Grande Vadrouille, where Cleo tells Fermín that she thinks she is pregnant. Just as Terry-Thomas and Bourvil escape the Nazis in a packed airplane, Fermín says he is going to the rest room and will be back. He does not return and is nowhere to be found when Cleo goes outside to look for him. Cleo reveals the same concern to Sofia, who takes her to get checked at the hospital where Antonio works. The doctor there confirms her pregnancy. We then get to see a great slice of the middle-class life in 70s Mexico when Sofia takes Cleo, Adela, and her children to a family friend's hacienda for New Year's. Both the landowners and the workers mention recent tensions over land in the area. During the celebrations, a fire erupts in the forest. Everyone helps put out the fire as a man counts down the remaining seconds of 1970 before singing in the foreground. A foreshadowing of trouble to come. Back in the city, Cleo accompanies the children and their grandmother to a movie theater (to watch Marooned) as Antonio is seen rushing in the other direction with a young woman. Sofia tries to hide Antonio's departure from the children, but her older son learns of it by eavesdropping in on a phone conversation. She asks him to not tell his younger siblings who believe their father is still away on business in Canada. Then, in a scene that makes me sad I never had a chance to see the film on the big screen, Cleo finds Fermín through Adela's boyfriend at an outdoor martial arts training class. It’s a rather epic scene, with hundreds of martial artists in a grid formation featuring a rather charismatic professional wrestler who challenges his student to close their eyes and stand on one leg. Only a watching Cleo manages, although no one but the audience notices. When Cleo finally finds Fermín his charming persona seen at the start of the film disappears and he threatens her to never look for him again. Months later Cleo is nearing her due date. Teresa takes her shopping for a crib in town. On their way to the store, they observe students gathering to protest in the streets. As they are browsing in the furniture store, the protests below turn murderous between police beatings, while bands of roving youths, implied to be the paramilitary group Los Halcones, randomly shoot at protesters. When a wounded man and a woman run into the store trying to hide, several youths find the man and kill him with a gunshot as the shop patrons take cover. Another gunman pointing a gun at Cleo turns out to be Fermín, who glares momentarily before running off with the other youths. Just then, Cleo's water breaks. Cleo, Teresa, and their driver try to get to the hospital quickly but are impeded by violence in the streets and car traffic. Cleo is rushed into the delivery room hours after going into labour. Antonio comes by to reassure her, but makes an excuse to avoid staying with her. The doctors hear no heartbeat in Cleo's womb and take her into surgery, where they deliver a stillborn baby girl. Multiple attempts to resuscitate the infant fail. The doctors give the body to Cleo for a few moments before taking it away. It is one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen. After a drunken attempt to park the family Ford Galaxie (the family’s prized car bought by Antonio) in the narrow garage area, Sofia buys a narrower car, but plans a final trip in the Galaxie for a family holiday to the beaches at Tuxpan, taking Cleo to help her cope with her loss. Sofia tells the children over dinner that she and their father are separated and that the trip is so their father can collect his belongings from their home. At the beach, the two smaller children are almost carried off by the strong current until Cleo wades into the ocean to save them from drowning even though she herself does not know how to swim. As Sofia and the children affirm their love for Cleo for such selfless devotion, she breaks down from intense guilt, revealing that she had not wanted her baby. Again, it is one of the saddest scenes I have ever seen but it is also quite magical. They return to their house, with the bookshelves gone and various bedrooms reassigned. Cleo prepares a load of washing, telling Adela she has much to tell her, as a plane flies overhead. The film is dedicated to Libo, who was the Cuarón family servant Cleo was based on (who is still alive and with the family). According to Cuarón, ninety percent of the scenes represented in the film are scenes taken out of his memory and every scene of the film was shot on location where the events depicted took place or on sets that were exact replicas. Cuarón was the only person on set to know the entire script and the direction of the film. Each day, before filming, the director would hand the lines to his cast, attempting to elicit real emotion and shock from his actors. Each actor would also receive contradictory directions and explanations, which meant that there was chaos on set every day. For Cuarón, "that's exactly what life is like: it's chaotic and you can't really plan how you'll react to a given situation". Roma was also filmed in sequence, which Yalitza Aparicio, who had never acted before, said actually helped her. It feels very authentic. How many directors would show a riot, that must have been a headache-inducing task of choreography, through the partially clear window on the second floor of a furniture shop? Cuarón actually became his own cinematographer when Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki became unavailable and I think he did an amazing job. Having decided to film in Mexico at real locations, Cuarón decided to embrace the constant stream of airbuses going overhead adding that planes are a symbol of a transient situation, stating that they remind us that there's a universe that is broader than the life that the film’s characters have. That is what I call authenticity – detailed visually and honest in its convictions. It is an indulgence but it is made out of love and out of thanks and I personally find that very hard to resist. Everything about the film is perfect. I’m not going to launch into the whole streaming debate – not again – but if cinema is really dead, then surely Roma would have been the film to revive it? Either way, it is a monumental achievement and a stunning piece of film making.