Roma ***** (2018, Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Diego Cortina Autrey) – Movie Review

Writer-director Alfonso Cuarón’s Mexican masterpiece Roma (2018) is a magnificent movie, brilliantly staged, and gloriously realised in gorgeous black and white scope images, with a warm and winning saga, highlighted by a couple of heart-stopping moments. Cuarón is also his own cinematographer. On this evidence, he could give up the day job of writer-director and be a magician director of photography.

It is a director’s film, but real acting is required too, and the two main roles are female, and Yalitza Aparicio and Marina de Tavira are superb as the maid Cleo and the house mother Sofia, both facing difficult, life-changing personal problems, with men, as it happens.

Cuarón’s story chronicles a tumultuous year in the life of a comfortable middle-class family in Mexico City in the early Seventies, a year and a life that he conjures up lavishly and magically. It is heartfelt, personal cinema, and real and relevant feeling, but the scale of some of the reconstructions is breathtaking.

Cleo manages to get herself pregnant by a man who cares more about warrior games than her, and Sofia’s doctor husband walks out on her for another woman, a fact she tries to cover up by lying to her nice kids.

The trip to the beach, the child delivery sequence in the hospital and scenes of the Mexican soldiers repressing a student protest are the unforgettable, tear-jerking highlights of a memorable movie. It is hard not to love every one of its 135 minutes.

Roma is nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Motion Picture, Best Foreign Language Film, Best Directing, Best Cinematography, Best Actress (Yalitza Aparicio), Best Supporting Actress (Marina de Tavira) and Best Screenplay. It won three: Best Foreign Language Film of the Year, Best Achievement in Directing and Best Achievement in Cinematography.

It was nominated for three Golden Globes: Best Screenplay – Motion Picture, Best Director – Motion Picture and Best Motion Picture – Foreign Language, and won Best Director – Motion Picture and Best Motion Picture – Foreign Language.

It was nominated for six London Critics Circle Film Awards, and won Film of the Year and Director of the Year.

Roma won four awards at the 72nd British Film Awards: Best Film and Director, Film Not in English and Cinematography.

Cuarón says 90 per cent of the film’s scenes are scenes taken from his memory and that 70 per cent of the furniture came from different family members. He names it the most essential movie of his career.

Roma is the neighbourhood where the film takes place, west of Mexico City’s historic centre. The film is dedicated to Libo, the family servant the central character is based on.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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