Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma” is a slow, quiet film about the people who clean houses and raise children while the men who employ them and the country around them tear itself apart. It is also, by nearly any measure, the best movie he has made. Working from his own childhood memories of Mexico City in the early 1970s, Cuarón builds a portrait of a working-class family that refuses easy sentiment while finding poetry in the smallest gestures. The result is a film that feels both intensely personal and universally resonant, a work that earns its reputation as one of the great achievements of recent cinema.
Trailer, via Netflix.
Cleo and the House
The film centers on Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a live-in maid for the middle-class Mexican family of four daughters and a husband who barely shows up. She is the constant presence, the one who cooks, cleans, and watches over the girls while her employers move through their lives without her. Her world is defined by routine, repetition, and occasional moments of grace, but the film does not let that routine settle into dullness. Instead, it finds tension in the ordinary, in the way a phone call can change everything in seconds.
Cleo’s life is the engine of the story, and Aparicio carries the weight of the entire production. Her performance is not flashy; it is restrained, patient, and deeply felt. She gives Cleo a presence that commands the screen without ever raising her voice. The film’s central tragedy is not a grand betrayal or a violent confrontation but a simple absence, and Aparicio makes that absence feel devastating.
The Family’s Absence
The family she serves is fractured in ways that are not immediately visible. The husband, Octavio (Jorge Antonio Guerrero), is often absent, and his absence is a wound that the daughters can sense even if they cannot name it. The youngest girl, Coco (Marco Pérez), is a small, curious presence whose questions about the world are both innocent and unsettling. The film follows the family through a series of events that test their bonds: a miscarriage, a trip to the beach, a sudden illness, and a political upheaval that rocks the city. Each event is rendered with a precision that makes the mundane feel monumental.
The performances across the board are excellent, but the film belongs to Aparicio and Cuarón’s direction. He shoots the film in black-and-white 1.33:1 aspect ratio, a square frame that recalls the look of 1970s television and home movies. This choice is not merely aesthetic; it flattens the image, making the characters feel closer to the viewer, more present, more real. It is a technique that suits a story about intimacy, about seeing the people around us clearly for once.
The Dog That Died
One scene stands out as a masterclass in filmmaking. A dog dies, and the camera holds on Cleo as she processes the loss in a single, unbroken shot. There is no music, no cutaway, no attempt to manipulate the audience. The shot simply stays, and the grief becomes physical, palpable. It is a moment that could have been overwritten, sentimentalized, but Cuarón trusts the silence and lets the actor do the work. It is one of the most effective scenes in recent memory.
The film is not without its flaws. Some viewers may find the pacing slow, and the final act, which shifts focus away from Cleo and toward a broader social crisis, feels less grounded than the earlier material. These are minor complaints against a film of this caliber. What remains undeniable is the power of the film’s central relationship: Cleo and the family she serves are bound together by duty, affection, and a shared history that neither side can fully articulate.
The Political Context
The film’s backdrop is the political turmoil of the mid-1970s in Mexico, a period marked by student protests, government repression, and a general sense of unease. The family’s chauffeur, Fermín (Edgar Flores), joins a group of protesters, and his decision sends shockwaves through the household. This subplot is not resolved neatly; it simply exists, a reminder that the personal is political, and that the stability of a family depends on forces far beyond its control.
Cuarón does not lecture about these events. He shows them, letting the images speak for themselves. A street demonstration, a police crackdown, a family discussion — each scene is rendered with a clarity that makes the abstraction of history feel immediate. The film is a reminder that history is made up of individual lives, and that those lives are shaped by forces they cannot see.
The Cinematic Craft
The technical achievement of “Roma” is staggering. The cinematography, by Cuarón himself, is precise and controlled, with compositions that recall the work of filmmakers like Michelangelo Antonioni and Yasujirō Ozu. The film uses long takes and deep focus to create a sense of space, of bodies moving through rooms and streets with a natural grace. The sound design is equally meticulous, with ambient noise — the hum of a refrigerator, the distant cry of a dog, the scrape of a broom — carrying as much emotional weight as any dialogue.
“Roma” is a film about the people who clean houses and raise children while the men who employ them and the country around them tear itself apart.
That line captures the essence of the film. It is not a story about a revolution; it is a story about the people who survive it. It is a story about labor, about dignity, about the quiet strength of a woman who is paid a pittance for a lifetime of service. The film asks us to look at her, really look at her, and to see her as a person rather than a function.
The film ends on a note of ambiguity, with Cleo facing a decision that will define her future. The ending is open, unresolved, and it is this openness that makes the film feel true. Life goes on, the film suggests, but it is not the same after the dust settles. The characters move forward, carrying the scars of their past, and the film leaves them there, unfinished, alive.
“Roma” is a masterpiece. It is a film that demands patience and rewards it with moments of genuine transcendence. It is a film that honors its subject, the people who are often invisible in stories, and makes them the center of the narrative. It is a film that reminds us that the personal is political, and that the political is always personal.
The film has been compared to classics of the genre, and it deserves every comparison. It is a work of immense craft and even greater humanity. It is a film that will be studied for decades, and it is a film that anyone who cares about storytelling should see.
9.6 of 10.
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