Movie Review: "Roma" Is a Small Story and a Huge Moment In Cinema

Netflix’s most ambitious movie ever gets a limited cinema release in Australia for the Cine Latino Film Festival.

Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma opens with a magic trick: the camera is trained on the floor of an apartment block, which unexpectedly turns into a mirror of the sky when a hose’s burst of water flows across it. Ta da. You could do it at home, if you wanted. The rest of Roma, I’m not so sure.

After his jaw-dropping sci-fi epics Gravity and Children of Men—not to mention the actually-magical Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban—writer-director Cuarón has gotten pretty good at showing us special effects we’ve never seen before, making them so convincing that we can’t see (or choose not to see) the strings.

But even with his partly autobiographical, hugely intimate Roma—inspired by the life of his actual housekeeper in the titular district in Mexico City—he still finds new ways to astound us, cinematically.

And turning floor tiles into a skylight is just the start.

Preschool teacher and amateur actress Yalitza Aparicio stars as Cleo, a young maid for a well-to-do family in 'Colonia Roma' circa 1970. She keeps their multistorey apartment in order, and cares for the increasingly fragile Sofia (Marina de Tavira) and her four kids when their father moves to Canada for "business". Otherwise, Cleo blends into the wallpaper, and her personal concerns don’t trouble her employers. That is, until the personal becomes distractingly visible.

The unassuming Cleo discovers she's pregnant to her first boyfriend, Fermin (Jorge Antonio Guerrero), who has things other than fatherhood on his mind. Abandoned, she carries on without complaint, until the roiling turbulence of 1970s Mexico intersects, and Roma’s real story of strength emerges.

Cineastes will be glad to know Cuarón remains on-brand in Roma, delivering a series of astounding unbroken, single-take shots in black-and-white, demonstrating phenomenal choreography and camera operation. (He serves as cinematographer and co-editor.) The biggest involves a stomach-dropping reconstruction of the Corpus Christi Massacre, in which more than 100 students were killed during a demonstration in Mexico City. However, the most powerful comes during the climax, on a beach, and you’ll have to just discover and endure that one by yourself, like Cleo.

Roma also remixes key moments from Cuarón's earlier features. Cleo takes the kids to go see Marooned in cinemas; a hokey space movie that must have inspired Gravity. Later, there’s a call-back to an iconic scene from Children of Men, though, with one key difference (again, I wouldn’t dare spoil). And as these moments accumulate, Roma’s small story grows in significance. Due to the episodic and sometimes inscrutable structure, it took a few days for me to appreciate the, ahem, gravity of what had unfolded in it. But once I got it, it got me and hasn't let go.

The closing credits carry a dedication: "For Libo". Liboria "Libo" Rodríguez was Cuarón’s real-life nanny; an indigenous Mixtec woman who came to work for the Cuaróns when Alfonso was a toddler. Her influence and life story have defined his past two decades of work, Roma reveals. Yet Roma doesn’t condescend by taking on the perspective of Alfonso’s avatar; a well-off child, destined for greatness, thanks to the sacrifices of his minder. This is all about Cleo, depicted humanely by Aparicio as a woman with an inner life and experiences all her own, both everyday and extraordinary. She achieves greatness too, and so does her film.

4.5/5

Rated MA15+ for strong themes and nudity. Roma will be available to stream on Netflix from 14 December 2018. It will play in limited cinemas across Australia for the Cine Latino Film Festival, with sessions in Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and Sydney on 24 and 25 November, and in Perth from 6 – 9 December. Check out the website for dates.

Header Image: Netflix