Roma
Original post date: 22 January 2019
Rating: ✭✭✭✰
A year ago I belatedly declared Alfonso Cuarón the clear standout of the three contemporary Oscar-winning Mexican filmmakers (along with Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro González Iñárritu) who rose to international prominence more or less simultaneously. With this multi-nominated gem, it is now clearly case closed. If there is a flaw to this masterwork, it may that it too consciously models itself on the European artists that Cuarón clearly admires. I mean, you do not make a heavily-nostalgic, sometimes-hallucinatory art film based on your own childhood and call it Roma without begging to be compared to Federico Fellini and his brethren. Still, coming from Mexico City’s Colonia Roma neighborhood, how could he have resisted? Normally in these auteur revisits to the past, the point of view is that of a child, thereby forcing us to fill in the gaps of what the child observes but does not understand. In this case, our perspective is that of Cleo, a young maid who is more than a bit child-like herself and a bit lost in the modern, affluent world in which she has landed. Cleo, whose native language is a regional dialect, is nearly as much a foreigner in 1971 Mexico City as we are. The characters are well defined, the black-and-white photography is glorious, and the images are hauntingly composed, as in the recurring sight of a jet crossing the sky. Given the autobiographical nature of the work, we are not particularly surprised when the family go out to the cinema to see John Sturges’s Marooned, thereby reminding us that Cuarón is also the director of Gravity. Of all Cuarón’s existing works (including Great Expectations, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Children of Men), the one this most resembles is Y tu mamá también in that it deals forthrightly with Cuarón’s native country and can nearly be considered a something of a soap opera while allowing us stark background glimpses of Mexico’s social and political life. In a stunning sequence, a visit by Cleo and the family’s granny to a shop in search of a crib breathtakingly gives way to a street battle that would be known as the Corpus Christi Massacre. Despite this tour de force, what lingers in the mind are the quieter moments and the lovely relationship between Cleo and the family that have made her one of their own. And now on a totally shameless and self-indulgent note: if you are interested in other works that are set in Mexico in the year 1971, well then, I definitely have a book for you.
Rating: ✭✭✭✰
A year ago I belatedly declared Alfonso Cuarón the clear standout of the three contemporary Oscar-winning Mexican filmmakers (along with Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro González Iñárritu) who rose to international prominence more or less simultaneously. With this multi-nominated gem, it is now clearly case closed. If there is a flaw to this masterwork, it may that it too consciously models itself on the European artists that Cuarón clearly admires. I mean, you do not make a heavily-nostalgic, sometimes-hallucinatory art film based on your own childhood and call it Roma without begging to be compared to Federico Fellini and his brethren. Still, coming from Mexico City’s Colonia Roma neighborhood, how could he have resisted? Normally in these auteur revisits to the past, the point of view is that of a child, thereby forcing us to fill in the gaps of what the child observes but does not understand. In this case, our perspective is that of Cleo, a young maid who is more than a bit child-like herself and a bit lost in the modern, affluent world in which she has landed. Cleo, whose native language is a regional dialect, is nearly as much a foreigner in 1971 Mexico City as we are. The characters are well defined, the black-and-white photography is glorious, and the images are hauntingly composed, as in the recurring sight of a jet crossing the sky. Given the autobiographical nature of the work, we are not particularly surprised when the family go out to the cinema to see John Sturges’s Marooned, thereby reminding us that Cuarón is also the director of Gravity. Of all Cuarón’s existing works (including Great Expectations, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Children of Men), the one this most resembles is Y tu mamá también in that it deals forthrightly with Cuarón’s native country and can nearly be considered a something of a soap opera while allowing us stark background glimpses of Mexico’s social and political life. In a stunning sequence, a visit by Cleo and the family’s granny to a shop in search of a crib breathtakingly gives way to a street battle that would be known as the Corpus Christi Massacre. Despite this tour de force, what lingers in the mind are the quieter moments and the lovely relationship between Cleo and the family that have made her one of their own. And now on a totally shameless and self-indulgent note: if you are interested in other works that are set in Mexico in the year 1971, well then, I definitely have a book for you.
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