Roma

seen on 31 January 2019

Alfonso Cuarón directs his own screenplay of Roma which shows the life of a troubled middle-class Mexican family through the eyes of their devoted and much loved nanny Cleo, played by the novice actress Yalitza Aparicio.

Shot in widescreen format in black and white, the film depicts events entirely from Cleo's point of view - in fact in some scenes the camera is used to show exactly what Cleo would be seeing, as if she herself were filming it. Like many domestic servants, she is 'part of the family' - the children love her, and their mother relies on her - but she is by no means an equal. Sofia, the children's mother (Marina de Tavira), can be very sympathetic, but at times of personal anguish she can explode and issue peremptory demands. Cleo's private life seems to hold some promise at first, but when she falls pregnant her erstwhile boyfriend disappears. At the same time, Sofia's husband is also deserting his family, though for a considerable time the children are led to believe he is on an extended work assignment in Quebec.

Public events have only a tangential effect on this family, and the political unrest of the times is only addressed when it impinges directly on the story; this is completely plausible. A street demonstration which led to violent beatings and shootings by the authorities and some vigilante groups has a catastrophic effect on Cleo, and, in a film which until then has limited itself to examining domestic squabbles and disappointments, and in which the only gunshots have been at a rather hedonistic target practice at a New Years Eve party in the countryside, it is quite shocking.

Everything depends on the attention to detail, the meticulously observed running of the household, the inconsequential childish arguments and squabbles, the growing and slightly nervous awareness of the children that something is wrong; the bewilderment of Cleo as she tries to come to terms with her personal predicament. All this is wonderfully done, with an astonishingly good central performance and an excellent supporting cast (the children being particularly natural) and a director who knows exactly what he wants and how to achieve it; he is also the cinematographer in this case and his touch is very secure.

It hardly seems appropriate to mention the two films in one paragraph, but it's a strange coincidence that I should have seen two films about a family in difficulties which also has a nanny. Of course Mary Poppins Returns and Roma have nothing else in common at all, the former being a piece of Disneyfied whimsy, and the latter a deeply felt and affectionate film inspired by Cuarón's own childhood in Mexico City in the early 1970s (pace the usual disclaimer in the credits about pure coincidence and so forth). Roma is without doubt by far the superior film; in fact it is a great film.