Roma
2018
****
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Cast: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Fernando Grediaga, Jorge Antonio Guerrero, Marco Graf, Daniela Demesa, Diego Cortina, Carlos Peralta, Nancy García, Verónica García
In 1970-1971, Cleo, a live-in maid, works for a middle-class family with four children in the Colonia Roma neighborhood of Mexico City. While the country is going through great upheaval, Cleo finds herself pregnant, and the matriarch of the household must accept that her husband has abandoned the family. Alfonso Cuarón's semi-autobiographical black and white drama takes a while to get going but eventually amounts to a very moving depiction of two resilient women. The male protagonists (or men in entire Mexico, in fact) don't come off looking that good. Alfonso Cuarón won three Academy Awards, for best foreign language film, for directing, and for the wonderful cinematography, which deploys long panning takes.
