Roma

Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours, 15 minutes
Director: Alfonso Cuarón

Quick Impressions:
As the end credits appeared, I turned to my husband and admitted in dismay, “This is so embarrassing, but I have no idea why that film was called Roma.”

He didn’t know either, but that’s less embarrassing for him because he showed up mere minutes before the movie ended. By a stroke of good luck, our ordinarily indefatigable three-year-old was taken out to play by a string of people all day long (including me, and my dad while I was Christmas shopping). So basically, he spent all the daylight hours playing in the backyard, then accommodatingly fell asleep before midnight so I could watch this movie in silence in our living room.

To be honest, since I knew Alfonso Cuarón’s much lauded tribute to the women who raised him takes place in Mexico City (where he’s from), I thought maybe Roma would be the name of the main character. But her name is Cleo.

Undismayed, I assumed as the story unfolded, the family would travel to some hamlet called Roma. And then for quite a stretch I felt absolutely positive that a certain character who appears late in the film would be named Roma. Nope.

When none of this happened, I felt bewildered and kind of stupid. I had to Google, “Why is this movie named Roma?” before starting the review.

I found several answers. Roma is the name of the neighborhood in Mexico City where the family lives. Roma is a nod to Fellini’s film Roma.  Cuarón believes Mexico City has become an extremely Roman city. Roma is Amor spelled backwards. I decided not to read enough to get one definitive answer because I always write my own reviews before reading others.

Here’s the amazing thing about this movie, though. Why it’s called Roma was the one thing I didn’t know. The movie tells you everything else, revealing itself more methodically and clearly than any other film I can call to mind at the moment.

I’ve long been fascinated by why some endings work (i.e. satisfy an audience) when others do not. (Barbara Herrnstein Smith has a great book on this subject called Poetic Closure that I found so useful when exploring the topic formally). Not only does Roma‘s ending work, but Cuarón sets up that ending in the first frame.

I went into this film knowing nothing about its plot, but the story’s beginning told me immediately where it would end. Thanks to heavy-handed foreshadowing (done so well that it feels inevitable rather than obnoxious), I also had a pretty good idea what would happen every step of the way, and I definitely knew exactly what to expect from a certain plot thread.

After the movie, my husband said, “That scene near the end got really intense. I was worried that [something might happen].” And I was like, “No, no, that scene is where [the opposite thing has to happen.]” (We didn’t actually speak in brackets. I’m just trying to avoid spoilers.) But this film does such a great job preparing then meeting audience expectations.

The Good:
The non-verbal storytelling in this film is simply amazing. At first I wrote “visual storytelling,” but it’s aural, too. Roma is so gloriously atmospheric. Immediately, we’re immersed in the sights and sounds, the rhythm of Cleo’s routine. After watching for less than ten minutes, I had such a strong sense of Cleo that I felt I’d known her all my life.

Roma prefers to show than to tell. Funnily enough, this technique may make it seem a little slow at first. You think, “Okay, these sights and sounds are all very relaxing and aesthetically pleasing, but nothing is really happening.” Then suddenly you realize, “Wait a second. I’ve been watching this movie for twenty minutes, and I feel like I know these people, like I’ve lived in their world forever, and like I know exactly what is about to happen next.”

The film is in Spanish with English subtitles, but it doesn’t need the subtitles. If I watch it again, I may try to turn them off. (I’m not sure if that’s possible. I hope so.) I mean, the dialogue is nice to have, but the characters’ actions and environment tell an extremely coherent story. No words are necessary. I’m positive I could have followed the action even if I had not understood a word they were saying. I’m not sure if Netflix lets us turn off these particular subtitles, though, and muting the TV wouldn’t work because the film’s rich soundscape is key to its storytelling.

To give you an idea of how mesmerizing the early scenes of the film are, I did not initially realize that the characters were speaking Spanish. Few words are spoken for the first several minutes as we get a sense of the rhythm of Cleo’s day, the rhythm of the household. And at our house, we almost always watch TV with the captions on (because it’s always noisy here, and my parents prefer it that way). So I’m used to reading the TV screen as I watch and think nothing of it. (Also I do understand some Spanish. Though I’m much better with Latin and French, I have taken Spanish in my distant past.) I just know that at some point, several minutes into the movie, I suddenly realized, “Oh, wait! They’re not speaking English!”

To be clear, I knew before watching that this was a Spanish language film. It’s just that as I watched, I somehow forgot that. Completely. There’s such a symphony of sounds organically emerging from the early scenes. The sounds of human speech just sort of blend in to that. The dog barks. The birds sing. The people speak.

There’s a beautiful, universal quality to Roma. That’s what I’m getting at. You don’t even notice that it’s not in your language. It immerses you in its vision of the world as you watch. You feel like you belong there.

In fact, I started having olfactory hallucinations while watching this film. I swear I could almost smell the food, the streets, the burning landscape, the hospital, the ocean. Now I mean, obviously, I’ve eaten food before, so I have a huge repository of scents available at any time. It’s not that unusual to imagine food while watching images of it. But the weirdest thing happened during one scene in which someone is simply walking down the street. I suddenly had a vivid memory of high school, when I briefly lived in Laredo on the Texas border. And all at once the scent of the streets downtown and across the river in Nuevo Laredo came flooding back to me, and it was almost overpowering and very unexpected.

So basically, what I’m trying to say is, “I am crazy.”

Just kidding, though I feel I sound increasingly delusional as I try to describe the experience of watching this superb film.

There’s a real economy of storytelling, too. So much character development is revealed through (brief) images. When we first meet the father, he is smoking a cigarette and trying to park his car. And almost right away, we have him. We know everything (that we need to) about him. We have a very clear idea of who he is (in relation to the rest of the story) and what is going on with him and what will happen. I find this astonishing. I mean, in that moment, we get a better look at his cigarette ashes than at his face, and yet somehow we know the guy, and we feel what is coming. Stuff like this is probably the reason Roma will get an Oscar nomination (and quite possibly the win) for Best Cinematography.

The cinematography is just outstanding. Cuarón himself is the cinematographer on this film. I’m used to him working with Emmanuel Lubezki, but I guess he doesn’t always. There are many gorgeous shots, but it’s not just that the images are beautiful or stirring. What most impresses me is the way Cuarón uses images to tell us something faster and more thoroughly than words ever good. He does this repeatedly.

The story is also quite beautiful. You watch and think, “What a great family!” It’s actually quite amazing considering that every single little thing that happens is a misfortune, a tragedy, a near tragedy, and yet the film leaves us feeling triumphant and positive. There’s so much love in that family, so much kindness and care.

I love the children. I began increasingly to relate to the mother (in temperament, not in circumstance), and by the end, I really, really loved the grandma (Verónica García).
Best Scene Visually:
Where do I begin?

The film has so many gorgeous shots. You’re always thinking, “Ooh! There’s a plane reflected in the water!” But there’s a lot more going on than beautiful framing.

In the very opening scene, someone is washing the floor. It’s a mundane, repetitive task. Then suddenly you realize, “This looks and sounds so much like ocean waves.” Not only does this foreshadow later scenes of the film (and set up a trajectory for the story), but it also leads us to equate the mundane world of mopping floors with the vast profundity of the ocean. And that’s just cool. It seems to say, “Look at the work required to keep the family functioning, all these small, often unappreciated, loving acts. That’s everything.”

And I mean, this is the first scene of the movie.

Honestly, I can’t imagine being in charge of props and set decoration on this film. You would never get to go home. All of these causal-gaze type shots are crammed full of stuff, so we can’t fail to understand where and when we are. (At one moment, I thought to myself, “The black-and-white makes the story seem set in the distant past, but it’s actually the 1970s.”  Then I saw a phone booth on the street and thought, “Oh no!  The 1970s is the distant past!”)  There’s always a bunch of random junk lying around everywhere.  Obtaining and placing these set-enhancing props must have taken forever. 

In one amazing moment, we get a look at a tabletop at a New Year’s party. This revealing hodge podge of celebratory clutter (including a baby bottle) is probably my favorite shot in the whole film.

And don’t even get me started on Roma‘s relentless foreshadowing.

Best Scene:
Well, the scene on the beach is amazing. Bizarrely when it arrived, I knew it was coming (just from watching the film, I mean), and I knew what was going to happen there. That’s really good storytelling. I completely anticipated this scene, was totally prepared for it, as if I’d already read the book and was watching a story I already knew.  (To be clear, there is no book.)

My favorite scene is the earthquake. I loved that. But then that later moment with the toast just gutted me with dread. You could always be wrong about the earthquake, but Cuarón goes on to drive the point home pretty emphatically.

Best Action Sequence:
Okay, so this is more of an inaction sequence. But I absolutely loved the moment when Cleo sits down on the ground outside the movie theater. (In fact, this was my favorite scene until the earthquake arrived later.)

Also, of course, the part in the furniture store is very gripping.

Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Yalitza Aparicio:
I don’t expect Aparicio to get a nomination for Best Actress, which is odd since the movie is outstanding, and she is the character whose story we are so intimately following. Her performance is great, though. You forget that she’s an actress. She seems like just Cleo, and for such a quiet character, she reveals so much through her eyes.

She’s riveting to watch in the last of her hospital scenes.

Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Marina de Tavira:
Marina de Tavira deserves a nomination for Best Supporting Actress. I love her performance as the mother, who really grew on me as a character. I find her so sympathetic, especially the way she drives that car. I can relate to that. The way she drives that car reads like she’s just daring someone to make her say, “I’m here, aren’t I?” The car probably deserves a nomination, too.

Tavira’s performance and character reminded me so much of the women in all the Pedro Almodóvar films my husband and I binge-watched back around the time we got married. (Now, some of those performances are more comedic. This is unmistakably dramatic, but her frazzled determination really spoke to me.)

I absolutely love the way she parks that car in the garage the night when she appears to have been drinking (or at the very least is overwrought).

Also fantastic is the scene when Cleo tells her she needs to speak with her.

The Negatives:
I considered suggesting that we watch this together one evening last weekend because I was so desperate to see it. That seemed like a decent idea. Of course, my husband wanted to see it, too. My parents speak Spanish. My dad used to work in Latin America. My son would ignore it and play. My daughter would watch until she got bored. (She’s young, but she likes to impress me by declaring an interest in Oscar movies.)

Well, I’m kind of glad we didn’t do that because this film has maybe the longest instance of full-frontal male nudity I’ve ever seen in a mainstream movie. I totally was not expecting that. I mean, yes, the movie is rated R. And the nudity isn’t during sex. But I mean, this guy is just very, very naked and puts on a display of his athleticism for what feels like a hundred years. (“Display of his athleticism” is not some cringey euphemism. He’s literally showing off his martial arts moves.) Now, if somebody young in your family wants to watch Roma, you could easily say, “Close your eyes,” then explain, “Okay, and now the man is running around the room naked showing off his fighting skills,” and then, “Okay, you can open your eyes now.”  It’s explicit, but it’s only one scene.

To be fair, this isn’t actually a point against the film. Though the scene surprised me (because it seemed to come from nowhere), I think it ultimately works really well. (You have to watch the full movie to appreciate it.)

But this burst of nudity and violence is jarring. If you think, “Oh, this is a quiet little black-and-white foreign film about a family that I can throw on while the kids are busy playing in the corner,” then you’re probably going to have a heart attack when you get to this scene and your kids immediately turn and look (because he’s making a lot of noise).

Later scenes do become quite intense, too. There’s violence and some disturbing content. The film is rated R for a reason.

Again, those aren’t critiques of the film, more of a public service announcement to parents thinking of trying to sneak in a movie on Netflix while their children appear to be otherwise engaged.  This wouldn’t happen in a movie theater because you wouldn’t take your children to an R-rated movie.  But on Netflix…