Roma, so far has achieved best film at the Bafta awards, has been hailed by critics almost across the board and is one of the favourites to receive the best film award at the Oscars. For me, the reason for this is due to the physical precision of camera movement and juxtaposition within and between frames, showing the micro within the macro and the premonitions present in the background of everyday life. The effect of such artistry serves up an intimate and free-flowing experience that is effortless to engross yourself in and delightful to try to understand. Cuaron digs deep into his formative years to present the story of a middle class household and primarily Cleo, the housemaid, against the backdrop of political tension in Mexico City in the 1970s, to put the individual back into the forefront of thought amongst political upheaval.
Cuaron has stated that the film is actually in tribute to the women in his life, namely the housemaid he lived with growing up represented by the character of Cleo in the film, as well as the mother Sofia. Cleo is perhaps an archetype of Mexican society; an ethinic minority working class maid, both madonna to the children and whore to the patriarchy. I believe it could be possible that one of the reasons this film has received such admiration is because it comes at a time when the feminist agenda is potent and Roma, while narrativising a story set in the past resonates with the plight and marginalisation of women in the present. Both Cleo and Sofia, have been exploited and forsaken by men. Sofia's husband, whose face we barely see enough of to recognise, tells his family he is going on a business trip to Canada when in reality he has just left the family and remains in Mexico City. Cleo, whose affair with a martial-arts come violent protester results in pregancy, is deserted and left to be a mother on her own. Both needed to depend on and whore themselves to men only to come to the assertion that as Sofia professes drunkenly "Us women will always be alone". Sofia's character is beautifully detailed and earnest. Cuaron delicately paves and mosaics the way for an authentic empathic response from the audience. At first we see her surface; a bossy and snobbish middle-class mother who spoils her children and has no patience for Cleo's meek attempts to please her. However, the moment Cleo confesses to Sofia she is pregnant, Sofia reassures her and does everything she can to help. From then on, Sofia's initial abrasiveness is transformed into being perceived more as the pangs of a frustrated yet loving wife, victim to a man-omniscient world.
Ordinarily the viewer might resent Sofia's hypocrisy for taking the lack of power she has in her marriage and projecting it over Cleo but Cuaron's spectacularly honest potrayal of humans coexisting humbles her so to show a more real and relatable woman who shares her adversities probably with many women around the world. The same can be said for the picture that is painted of the entire family; initially conveyed as unattractively dysfunctional, spoilt and naive, but eventually a loss of innocence occurs where they find out the Dad is not coming back and 2 of the children almost drown at sea, only to be saved by Cleo. The silence that ensues after a duration of rowdiness throughout the film brings calm and recontextualises the family's dysfunction to be an ordinary depiction of a trialed family, shedding its condescension of the middle-class.
Something must be said for the photography of this film; how life spills into every frame without cluttering; how the black and white hue is less nostalgic as it is an insistence on seeing the shapes, positionings and depth of field rather than colours that make things stand out; the hyper-real panning shots and transitions that almost make you feel you're watching in real time and the wide angle shots where frames become apotheocised and foreboding paintings. For most of the film, Cleo is followed around as she elegantly carries out her daily chores with a slowness and pleasantness that suggests she feels no one is keeping tabs on her. You can feel Cuaron's longing to capture a more vivid cherished memory of a person than his mind can, as if to relive it. There's a pleasantness to this but it is interspersed with moments of ominous foreshadowing. The first scene of the water on the tiles coming to engulf the frame is a reference to the waves that later engulf the children. The shot of a band marching down the street as the father leaves foretells a kind of funeral implying that he will not return. The earthquake that causes the roof to cave in on a new born baby's incubator as Cleo watches on in dismay makes the viewer anticipate her baby's death. Much like memory is a piecing together of parts, Cuaron here has recreated his memory in a fashion where all the pivotal events are sort of like inevitable prophecies which he has pieced together and is now revealing to his younger and inattentional self. It is a therapy of sorts, retelling Cuaron's loss of innocense.
Alongside these personal explorations, Cuaron's film is poeticly enjoyable in its simple presentation of the details which is apparently unimposed, rather perceptively captured. I could spend a while microanalysing the cinematography of each frame but for my first viewing, I can happily watch in on this ordinary family's life like a voyeur of a timeless, intimately relatable memory. A rare film certainly worth its critical acclaim.