![]() Nevertheless, she endures, rather stoically, for fear of losing her job and having to return to her poor village.īeyond an appreciation of Libo or an acknowledgment of the disregarded servant class in most cultures, Roma is a testament to female endurance. Sofia angrily orders Cleo to clean up dog waste when Antonio mentions it, and she’s blamed when a child overhears a marital spat through a closed door. Inside the home, the adults acknowledge her only when a need arises. In the early scenes, we see Cleo and others of her underclass taken for granted, if not unseen-but then “underclass” is an ironic term, given that many of her duties are carried out on rooftops adorned with clotheslines, a space almost exclusively reserved for servants. And yet, every night when Cleo puts the children to bed, they don’t say “goodnight.” They say, “I love you.” The children seem to understand what the adults-including Cleo herself-do not, that Cleo is very much a member of the family. They speak to each other in Mixtec, a language the family cannot understand their quarters are distanced from the rooms of the family members. Cooking, cleaning, and tending to four children, Cleo and Adela nonetheless exist in a separate world from their employers. ![]() Newcomer Yalitza Aparicio plays a fictionalized version of Libo, named Cleo, who works alongside Adela (Nancy García) in the privileged household of Sofia (Marina de Tavira) and her doctor husband, Antonio (Fernando Grediaga). ![]() It’s all woven into Roma, a film that refuses to spell out its autobiographical significance, even as it rewards those willing to dissect the material to discover that dimension. When contemplating his past later in life, Cuarón thought back on Libo, her role in his family, and many of the events, both painful and heartwarming, that shaped his childhood-from the tales of Libo’s experience to his father leaving the family when Cuarón was just ten years old. Libo, an indigenous Mixtec still going at 74, belonged to a lower class in Mexican society than those of Cuarón’s higher class Spanish descendants, many of whom maintain deep-seated prejudices against the natives. Before long, the young artist learned more about his country and the sociopolitical forces at work. Libo was always there in Cuarón’s childhood, taking care of him, and eventually sharing stories about her former life. The son of a United Nations scientist, Cuarón grew up in a cosmopolitan city and remained unaware of the past hardships experienced by his nanny, Liboria “Libo” Rodríguez, who grew up impoverished in a small village in Oaxaca. He told Variety in a recent interview that he was oblivious to the political, racial, or social conditions unfolding around him. Situated in Roma, a bourgeois district in Mexico City, around 1970, the film draws from Cuarón’s experiences growing up in that neighborhood. ![]() Roma is the sort of film described as life-affirming without irony or pretense, as it reminds us of the potential for love, frailty, and unbreakable bonds between people. It’s not a work of realism in the verité sense, though its subject matter gives a forgotten and often dejected class an elegantly crafted and authentic showcase. Watching Roma, you witness a Spanish-language social drama shot in pristine black-and-white, and you notice the self-conscious camera movements-how they glide about the setting in Cuarón’s regular use of ornate extended shots, how they contain symbolism and comment on the larger dynamics of the most intimate scenes. ![]() Cuarón articulates his most personal memories in a loving ode to his real-life nanny, and in doing so, he achieves a level of cinematic purity rarely seen in filmmaking since the height of the European arthouse scene in the 1950s and 1960s. With the soul of Italian Neorealism, the autobiographical timbre of a Federico Fellini reverie, and the controlled aesthetic showmanship for which its director’s work is renowned, Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma is a profound human document and astounding demonstration of high-art filmmaking. ![]()
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