Roma

Roma (2018) follows a young woman working in a family's house in Mexico City in the early seventies, drawn from Cuarón's own childhood. Cleo is a domestic worker in a middle class home. She looks after the children, cleans, and is treated as part of the family without being one. Within a single year the father leaves, Cleo becomes pregnant, and the student movement in the country is put down with violence. Roma is the name of the neighbourhood Cuarón grew up in. The house, the furniture and the layout were rebuilt to match the house of his childhood. The shooting method was unusual. Cuarón shot in sequence, in the order the story happens. The actors were not given a script; each day they were told only that day's events, so the characters knew no more about what was coming than the audience. Yalitza Aparicio, who plays Cleo, had never acted. She was a teacher. Cuarón photographed it himself. Black and white and very wide framing; the camera mostly pans slowly sideways, because the film wants you to see what is looked at rather than to look. The sound design is a separate achievement; the city is audible behind everything. It was made by Netflix and Cuarón won the Oscar for direction. It runs 135 minutes. Good for: slow cinema, autobiographical film, and visual work. Less good for: the plot is thin, the pace is very slow, and one birth scene is extremely hard.