The problem with “Roma”

By N.B.

ONE EVENING in Mexico City in 1971, a middle-class family slumps in front of a television comedy show. There is a mother and a father and four small children, all cuddled together, and there is a maid, Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), who kneels down to join them. One of the children puts an arm around her shoulder: Cleo is clearly one of the family. A few seconds later the mother instructs her to fetch tea for the man of the house, and the spell is broken. Cleo may be the person who tells the children she loves them, who wakes them up in the morning and sings them to sleep at night, but after everyone else has gone to bed she still has to tidy and turn off the lights before climbing an external staircase to the cluttered room she shares with another maid. She is still a servant.

“Roma” is her story, as told by Alfonso Cuarón. Having had successive commercial and critical hits with “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”, “Children of Men” and “Gravity”, the Mexican writer-director has returned to his homeland for a film which, he says, is almost entirely autobiographical. Everything from the design of the family’s house to the name of its endlessly pooping dog is drawn from Mr Cuarón’s memories. He even includes a self-mythologising scene in which the children see a science-fiction movie which resembles “Gravity”, as if to show the viewer the source of his inspiration. But “Roma” is primarily a tribute to Liboria Rodriguez, the Mixteco housekeeper who helped raise him. It finishes with a dedication: “For Libo”.