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Roma (2018),
Director: Alfonso Cuarón, rated R nudity,
language, disturbing images
There are periods
in history that scar societies and
moments in life that transform us as individuals.
  Starring:
Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Jorge Antonio Guerrero,
Marco Graf, Daniela Demesa, Diego Courtina Autrey, Carlos
Peralta, Nancy García, Verónica García
DML Rating:
★★★★★★★★☆☆
- great
"We
are alone. No matter what they tell you, we women are always
alone." - Señora Sofía, speaking to Cleo
Why watch this? To
understand that even in extreme poverty, little dramas are worth
knowing.
Plot Summary:
Set in early 1970s Mexico City, the film follows Cleo, a live-in
indigenous housekeeper working for an upper-middle-class family
navigating a quiet domestic crisis. As the family structure
begins to unravel due to the father's abandonment of his wife,
Cleo faces her own life-altering personal crisis, forcing both
women to rely on each other for strength.
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Dad's Preview:
A couple I am good friends with walked out of Roma
after a few minutes. This did not deter me from seeing
this critically acclaimed work, thank goodness. To be
fair, it is a slow-moving drama, built on
moments, rather than action. It follows a young Mexican
girl's meager existence as a maid in the middle-class
Colonia Roma neighborhood. When I grew up in El Paso,
Texas, my family always had a Mexican maid. This film's
heroine, Cleo, reminds me of those hard-working, quiet
women whom my sister hired for childcare and housework.
They lived with us and became part of our family. They
were meek servants with limited English skills and
little power or rights, however, we grew to love them.
Roma captures Cleo's chronic uncertainty and
sadness. Touchingly shot in black-and-white, and using
only ambient sounds (no music), it paints a vivid
portrait of a girl weathering her birth into poverty
within a country rocked by instability. This is Cleo's
story, and it builds towards her understated
emancipation, and that moment es muy especial. |
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Espectáculos
Fílmicos El Coyúl, Pimienta Films, Participant
Media, Esperanto-Filmoj; Netflix |
