Roma

Many great filmmakers have made movies about their childhoods, and those are always called "personal" films. Well, Alfonso Cuaron has made one called Roma, in which he says 90 percent of it really happened. It's a stunningly beautiful and moving film, but it has an episodic structure that doesn't quite pull together, and the central character is a bit of a cipher.

That is Cleo, a young domestic working for the family that represents Cuaron's. She's playing winningly by Yalitza Aparicio, not a professional actor, and perhaps that's why she's not called on to to do much. The film is dedicated to the woman whom she's based on, but Cuaron does not round her character off. She hardly says anything, and we have no idea what she's thinking, what her hopes and dreams are, if any, and what life is like in her hometown in Oaxaca, which is only mentioned in passing.

The film is named for a neighborhood in Mexico City that was once upper-middle class but is getting seedier. The parents are a doctor father, a biochemist mother who's a stay-at-home-mom, and four kids, plus two maids, Cleo and Adela. Cleo is the main character, in a kind of Upstairs, Downstairs point of view. I don't think there's too many scenes, if any, that show the family without Cleo in sight or in earshot. Two parallel things happen at the start: Cleo is seeing a guy, Fermin, who's really into martial arts, and when she tells him she's pregnant at a movie, he gets up to go to the bathroom and never comes back. In bits and pieces (and only from Cleo's overhearing) we learn that the doctor has left the wife, leaving her a single mother. These two stories intertwine, as the mother helps take care of Cleo, who is like part of the family.

The movie is set in 1970-71, when there was political unrest in Mexico (I think that's pretty much a constant), although we don't get a lot of info. A Mexican person would no doubt understand it better. The children's grandmother is taking Cleo shopping for baby furniture when they witness a riot, which was a real event dubbed the Corpus Christi Massacre, when right-wing thugs shot at student protesters. There are other glimpses into the Mexican middle class--it seems they all wanted to go to Disneyland, too.

Cuaron directs, writes, edits, and photographed the film (he was also producer, so it will be interesting to see if he gets five Oscar nominations). There are some absolutely brilliant shots. The opening focuses on a tile floor. Water splashes over it, allowing a reflection of the sky above, including an airplane going overhead. I thought that might be just  coincidence, but airplanes appear at two more key times, including in the last shot. A metaphor for escape? The doctor is introduced by his car, the grille looming ahead, with shots of a cigarette in his hand as he tries to navigate the narrow driveway. Later, his abandoned wife will try and fail miserably (she buys a narrower car).

Roma is a very good film, and it's already over two hours, but it could have stood more about Cleo. Even when she's talking to Adela she doesn't reveal much. I suppose Cuaron only knows what he knows, and that's what she was like when she worked with his family, but it's limiting.