![]() |
Alfonso Cuarón's beautifully filmed semi-auto-biography |
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Cast: Yalitza Aparicio (Cleo), Marina de Tavira (Sofia),
Fernando Grediaga (Antonio), Jorge Antonio Guerrero (Fermín), Marco Graf
(Pepe), Daniela Demesa (Sofi), Diego Cortina Autrey (Toño), Carlos Peralta
(Paco), Nancy García (Adela), Verónica García (Teresa), José Manuel Guerrero
Mendoza (Ramón)
All great artists come from somewhere. Experiences fashioned
and moulded them. And great storytellers often feel an urge to dramatise and
explore their own backgrounds, to bring these events that formed them as
artists to life for a wider audience. It’s what Alfonso Cuarón does here with
his semi-autobiographical Roma, a
Federico Fellini-inspired meditation on events from his own childhood and
upbringing, filmed with magnificent, patient lushness.
Despite its semi-autobiographical nature, Roma actually revolves not around the
young version of Cuarón (he in fact is hard to identify in the film, but is
probably the imaginative younger son Pepe) but Cleo, the family’s live-in maid.
Set in 1970-1, the household comprises a middle-class Mexican family (husband a
doctor, wife a chemist) and three live-in servants. The film follows a year or
so in the life of the family and Cleo, including her surprise pregnancy and the
repercussions of that on Cleo, as well as the impact of troubles in the
marriage of the parents Antonio and Sofia.
Cuarón’s debt to Fellini’s semi-autobiographical films,
which turned his own childhood and career into a sort of filmmaker’s fable, is
clear – heck even the title itself is a clear nod to Fellini’s own childhood
story also titled Roma. It’s a poetic
presenting of a version of events that may have happened to the filmmaker, and
it feels personal and filled with meaning.
This Roma is a
lusciously filmed, gorgeously meditative, visual treat. Shot in crisp and clear
black and white, the camerawork is sublime – slow and gentle, carefully
following events. Several shots use a slow dolly shot in an arc, to give the
feeling of your head turning to take in scenes and the events within them. Cuarón
presents a string of arresting and beautiful images, and the film’s lyrical
observational tone – like a gentle Mexican Mike Leigh fable – lets the action
soak over the viewer and lure you into caring for the characters and the
events.
I say that, because actually very little happens for large
chunks of this film, other than following the lives of the family and the everyday
events they deal with, from cleaning up dog’s mess from the drive, to trips to
the cinema. It’s this air of ordinariness, this lack of event, that gives the
themes bubbling under the surface a lot of their strength – namely the shock
pregnancy of Cleo and the clear marriage break-up taking place between the two
parents. These darker themes – as well as the potential political radicalism of
one minor character – are dangerous undercurrents that threaten, but don’t
overwhelm, the normality of many of the events. Cuarón lets them play as
subtext, while keeping the event and drama to a minimum – this helps make the
drama feel extremely real.
However, it also means that when these themes start to pay
off into more traditionally dramatic events in the final quarter of the film, it
carries a surprising and sudden emotional force that caught me off guard.
Somehow, from just living in and among this extended family, and essentially
observing their day-to-day life, it set me up to invest even more in the
turmoil that threatens their happiness, as those darker currents that had been
kept under the family’s (and the film’s) radar burst up onto the surface. So
suddenly, at the end of the film, I found myself actually choking back a few
tears at the genuine and real emotion that the film suddenly gives us.
This is helped by the naturalistic performances of the cast
of non-professional actors. I often feel that the reality of performances like
this, this neo-realism approach of encouraging people to play versions of
themselves, a la Bicycle Thieves, is as much to a tribute to the patient, gentle and
subtle direction of the film-makers as it is to the actors. Cuarón certainly
worked with his cast here – shooting the film sequentially to help the actors
develop their performances as the film’s story itself develops. Saying that,
Yalitza Aparicio is intriguing as the dedicated maid and I was extremely taken
by the strength of Marina de Tavira as the mother holding her family together.
What I found less successful about the film was the fact
that this story is meant to be about Cleo, but I’m not sure what we really
learn about her. Cuarón partly covers her lack of experience by reducing her
dialogue to a minimum and letting her eyes convey her story. It’s just I’m not
sure what story there really is. Events happen to her – and clearly take an
emotional toll – but it never feels (to me) that we get an insight into her
character, to her real inner life. We get glimpses but she remains a slight
cipher for events that happen to her: what impact do they have on her? How does
she change? What does she learn? Crude as “learning” can be in drama, Cleo
feels basically the same at the end of the film as she does at the beginning.
In fact if this film was in English, or set in England, I
can imagine it being savaged for its presentation of the servant as a woman who
seems to define nearly all her life by her dedication and service to her
employers. There is a certain sweetness at Cleo being treated like one of the
family, and covered in warmth and affection, but she still gets ordered to
clear dog shit off the drive. If Downton
Abbey is often criticised for the paternalistic view the employers have of
the lower classes (sweet as it is to see the care and concern Sofia treats Cleo
with), surely this film is guilty of it as well? The film also flips this with
those same lower classes integrating their own contentment with those of their
masters. At times Roma feels like a
man paying tribute to his nanny by saying “she went through terrible things,
but the important thing was she was always there for us”. Which somehow points
exactly at how much he really knew about this person, even if the film seems to
show the warts and all of her life.
Roma is a
beautiful and poetic exploration of a childhood – but it feels like it has the
understanding of a child. It doesn’t really scratch below the surface to give
us the adult perspective, to interpret what the adults are thinking and
feeling. It treats the audience like the children – we see things, but we don’t
get down into the emotional depths of its characters’ stories. Don’t get me
wrong – there are scenes laced with emotional force – but it’s because scenes
such as tragic childbirth or danger to children are going to carry emotional
force regardless. It doesn’t feel like the depth is connected to the
characters. For all the time we spend with Cleo, I couldn’t describe at all
what she is like or who she really is (except maybe “long suffering”,
“dedicated” or “kind”). For all the film’s beauty, charm, poetry and joy it’s
somehow, ever so slightly, empty.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.