Reviews

We all know by Cuarón's work that he isn't the most prolific of directors, and also that he doesn't reach the highest of personal levels in his filmmaking. In Roma, though, we must forget those facts: it is the most intimate we can get from the Mexican. This is a movie made essentially of emotions (and beautiful shots), where Mr. Cuarón takes almost all the credits (direction, photography, edition, writing, production).

In the opening credits, we get to see a still shot of what seems to be someone cleaning a tile floor. The water reflects the sky and there's a plane slowly passing by: we're outside. This kind of wavy motion of the water made me recall Fernando Pessoa, who, in Mensagem, wrote: "Deus ao mar o perigo e o abismo deu, Mas nele é que espelhou o céu." Something tragic is about to unfold before our eyes.

Suddenly, the camera shifts its angle and we meet Cleo, the young girl that characterizes Libo, the person that Cuarón dedicated the movie to and whose identity I don't want to reveal. She speaks Spanish with a dog. In a hurry, leaves the house where we believe she is a housekeeper and walks to the nursery, picking up a little boy, Pepe. As she returns home, other girl tells her that Fermín is on the phone, waiting to talk to her. He's her new boyfriend. As the girls are talking, the rest of the family gets home, but we don't see the father, who is leaving to Quebec for work next Friday. At the end of the day, the father returns, still earlier than usual. He is presented as a superior character, hearing classical music and smoking inside a big car, with some difficulties to park it inside the house, as he also can't avoid the dog's feces: he doesn't really fit in this place.

In the evening, the family gathers in the leaving room watching TV and we see the mother's "jealousy": she asks Cleo to bring a tea to the father, when the kids start to embrace her. Before the end of the day and everyone goes to sleep (possibly the best photographed scene is seen here), we hear the couple fighting in their room.

Some other day, Cleo and Adela (the other housekeeper) go to the movies with their boyfriends. The first one changes her mind when Fermín asks her to take a walk instead, ending both in a room. Fermín talks about his hard days as a teen. Then, they have sex.

Cleo wakes up Friday morning. The following events change the whole scenario.

When Antonio, the father, is about to leave, Sofía, his wife, holds him and kisses him, very strongly: something's not right, and we start to doubt about this father figure (maybe he is leaving definitely). A military band passes by their house, which, for me, symbolizes the dark days that this family is about to experience. This time, the mother is the one who walks the young Pepe to the nursery, after shouting with Cleo to clean the dog's feces. While she does it, we hear the plane passing by again and we're taken to the cinema, where Fermín and Cleo are kissing. She, then, reveals that she might be pregnant and the boy disappears, leaving the poor girl helpless.

Cleo's thoughts wander while she looks at a hail storm. Again, Mr. Cuarón is telling us that something went very wrong. It is time for her to ask her bosses for help, which she does. At the same time, the grandmother, Teresa, is speaking to her daughter about Antonio's departure. We are now sure: this movie is about these two women, whose men left them behind, and what they'll do to make it without them.

The big difference between these two is that Sofi, in contrast with Cleo, never had to fight for nothing, which is clearly seen by the way she drives her car, when both women go to the hospital. But, at least, she has a car and, possibly, a license to drive it, something unthinkable for people like Cleo.

Inside the hospital, we learn, in one hand, that Fermín is the only man who had intercourse with Cleo. In the other hand, the drama between Sofi and Antonio intensifies as she talks with Dr. Zavala about her relationship problems. An earthquake hits the town while Cleo contemplates a new born baby (who probably died following that moment). We shift to some new place where some Christian crosses are shown. This is where the director starts to "overemphasize" with his symbolism. Wasn't the "omen" brought by the previous scene enough to tell us that, maybe, her baby is sentenced? Why do we need this shot for? It doesn't even stand at the level of the majority of the picture's frames. In this moment, we start to question Mr. Cuarón's (not so) subtle way to warn us.

The family spends the Christmas holidays in the countryside with some other bourgeois families that speak some English. This is possibly the most boring part of the movie and it only serves the director's mission to, once again, clarify that Cleo and Sofi live in different worlds: didn't we already know that? The New Year starts with another one or two hints of tragedy. Cleo doesn't want to have toast with her "low class" friend, but when she agrees, some other woman hits her: the glass falls, and breaks. When she leaves the room where all the servants were celebrating, a fire starts to consume the woods. At this point, I'm starting to doubt the story and who wrote it, even more when all the people (including children) are helping to extinguish the fire and a mysterious man, shown before, starts to sing something... well, something! Before returning home, Cleo walks through the fields with the exact same woman who pushed her and talks about how that place reminds her home. Cleo doesn't talk that much, so we must listen when she does, even if it means nothing...

The sunny breeze turns into a rainy day: the family's back home. Their big Maverick that Sofi scratched is now fixed. Antonio, though, still ain't home. Toño, the oldest of the brothers, wants to go to the cinema. Antonio is there. Cinema is now a place related with betrayal, and we must never forget Fermín, who Cleo ultimately finds in a martial arts training. The most important moment of this scene, apart from the fact that Fermín leaves Cleo helpless once again, is that, when Profesor Zovek, a famous figure in Mexico, challenges people to pose in a certain way with their eyes closed, Cleo is the only one who can accomplish the demand: she is the movie's strongest character, and she'll make through this storm.

Everything seems to be in a downfall: the kids fight in the afternoon and, in the evening, Sofía returns home drunk: "We're alone. (...) We, women, are always alone!". Cleo doesn't reply. Did she need to hear that? Did we? And did we need to hear that, in the following scene, where we clearly see people protesting that they're protesting? If Cuarón wants to make an allusion to something, well, he has to be specific, not just talk about violence and leave the matter like that. He really made an effort to show us a reality that his people lived, but, somehow, failed: what follows is the movie's worst scene.

After we get a "cliché" kind of piece of story, we reach the movie's emotional "clímax" (and its best scene, in my opinion). This is where the director shines. All we can do now is to keep quiet and simply look at the screen. If we pay attention around us, we'll then notice an empty, but understandable, silence, a silence that matches the birds' and the dogs' sounds, colored by frames where we see the family's neighborhood and house.

Cleo is now a different, maybe stronger woman. Sofía buys a new, smaller car. The family goes to the beach. Sofía tells the children the truth about their father. They face it with different reactions: Toño freezes, Paco cries more than everyone else, the young Sofi hugs Cleo and little Pepe just seems to have some anger inside, leaving us with no clear understanding of what he's feeling. They talk about divorce and then sit silently eating ice-cream next to some couple getting married, which reminded me of how good Cuarón can actually be, sometimes.

When the family finally confronts the sea of problems surrounding them, the movie seems to be over. As they return home, the same military band passes by. Same thing happens with the plane. The sunlight is now strong. Cleo wants to talk with Adela, and not the other way around. Everything's in its right place now.

I preferred not to talk about the movie's core issue/subject matter, so that people go on and see it like I did. When we reach the end, there's nothing more than that issue to really deeply think about. Not always easy to see, this is a touching movie, but not a perfect one. When we start to imagine other ways Cuarón had to pull this off, we reach the conclusion that it could've been his best movie, because it'd certainly be one of the best movies of the decade. Doing things in his own flawed fashion, he made a flawed movie, but certainly one that's worth watching and re-watching.