Roma ★★★★
MEXICAN director Alfonso Cauron’s Roma is the raging favourite to take out the 2019 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
And so it should be. This is a brilliantly-made and evocative love story to the director’s home land.
Filmed in monochrome, Roma could easily be mistaken for having been made in 1971, the year in which it is set, such is the authenticity of Cauron’s technical achievement.
The director of Gravity and Children of Men adapts his roaming camera technique to perfectly fit the approach taken by classic documentarians of the past who sought, in the most naturalistic style possible, to depict the movement, colour and atmosphere of a living, breathing city and its vibrant and chaotic population.
Cauron, who also wrote, shot and edited the film, returns to the locations of his own childhood to recreate the story of the live-in maid who looked after him and his siblings for many years.
As well as presenting a simple and touching human drama, young Cleo’s story provides a microcosm of the dichotomy that existed within the society of that time and the State’s treatment of its citizens.
On one level, Cleo seems exploited and denigrated in her work and lowly position yet, when the family itself is most in crisis, they not only turn to her but she is also taken to their bosom and comforted in her hours of need.
The film opens as it intends to continue, with incredibly crafted scenes that slowly reveal the sense of place and offer snippets of the overall story.
It’s a close-up of a tiled floor for several minutes with water being washed across. We know somebody is sweeping and it’s open to the elements. As the3 water pools, it reflects the passing of an aircraft through the sky.
We are in the courtyard of an upper-class home in the Colonia Roma neigbourhood of Mexico City and Cleo is washing away the dog excrement from the driveway.
It’s just one of the never-ending chores in her daily routine looking after Sofia and her four children while husband Antonio, a doctor, is regularly busy with his work.
It soon becomes clear that their marriage is strained and Sofia is striggling to cope with her husband’s aloofness and seeming rejection of her and the children. Cleo is also having personal problems with her on-again/off-again boyfreiend Fermin.
As both personal stories progress to crisis points, so does the political atmopshere in the streets outside as the student protest movement and authoritarian response becomes more visible and violent.
The magic of Romais in Cauron’s seeming ability to make carefully constructed scenes appear instead like he has filmed a grand, chaotic larger picture and then focused on smaller moments contained within.
And then, even within those smaller moments, there are images in the background that continue to stand-out: a man is fired from a canon at a carnival in the background during a political rally; a wedding photographer snaps the happy couple in a mud-covered shanty town road as Cleo navigates a plank on her way to quietly confront Fermin.
Other scenes, such as the open-air martial arts class provided by a television strong-man, must allude to actual events that Cauron has recalled from his childhood.
The use of tracking shots is enormously effective, albeit perhaps a little over-used. Whether within the family home, at a woodland picnic or amongst a street demonstration, the sense of documenting moments in a particular time and place is palpable.
Finally, there are tension-filled moments that apart from being wonderfully filmed and greatly enhanced by the acting by members of Cauron’s mostly inexperienced cast.