Roma | Film Review

Hey Guys x

Here's a film that's probably going to win more than a few Oscars, and as it's on Netflix, I'm pretty sure this will be the first Oscar win for a Netflix original movie, which would be really cool.

The film is about a woman called Cleo who is a housekeeper/maid for an upper-middle-class family in Mexico City, including the many challenges she faces, and the way that her life tends to parallel the life of her boss, Sofia.

As you can tell from the description, the story isn't complicated or hard to understand - it's what's done with this simple premise that makes it stand out amongst other nominated films.

First of all, the pace of the film's opening mirrors the slowness, repetition and perhaps tedium of Cleo's domestic work - a pace that is consistent throughout the film.

It is particularly interesting to see the life of a wealthy family through the eyes of 'the help' - bringing the background to the foreground. In a lot of films with a rich/poor divide of sorts, one side is made to be the 'antagonist' of the story, but the fact that this story comes from the point of view of someone on one side, who loves the family that she essentially looks after (including the matriarchs) adds an interesting dynamic to the overall message of the film.

You don't have to have grown up in 1970s Mexico to understand and experience the realism that the film is presenting. Even though the film has been nominated for awards at many English-speaking ceremonies and is presented to audiences that might not necessarily share the same first language doesn't change how the film is experienced. The themes of family, love and hardship transcend language and cultural barriers.

The fact that the film is black and white illustrates the simplicity of the story, and of Cleo's world, where a large portion of her days are spent doing the same thing, cleaning the same areas, making the same beds and walking down the same streets. The story doesn't have to have a complicated plot to work well.
This is also shown in the parallels between Cleo and Sofia, illustrating that the only difference between these two women is their social status. And at the end of the day, the fact that they have each other to lean on is more important than how they were brought up.

The most common thing that people point out about this film is the cinematography, and I have to completely agree. In particular the scene that stood out to me as being phenomenal in terms of the cinematography was the scene where Cleo goes into the sea to help the children. It was such a beautiful shot.

Having said all of this, while I completely understand why the film has received nominations, and why so many people revere it, I didn't love it. For a start, as mentioned, the pace never quickens, it is a very slow moving film. Because of this, occasionally you have to wait quite a long time for anything to happen. And because the biggest events happen so far away from each other, I found myself getting bored.
In addition, I found myself not being able to warm to any of the characters, including Cleo. While I liked her as a person, I couldn't connect with her, and while I sympathised with her while she was going through hardships, these characters didn't stick with me when the film finished. And this isn't me saying that the cast, including Oscar nominated Yalitza Aparicio weren't good, because they were amazing actors - I just didn't warm to the characters that they were portraying.

Overall, definitely watch this if you get the chance, because it's an interesting movie with a lot of important, poignant messages.

7/10

Lou