Roma is an absolutely spellbinding film, just having come out of the second Australian showing at the Adelaide Film Festival I have to admit I’m kind of speechless.
Alfonso Cuaron’s much anticipated return to Mexican film gives us many things to talk about. Bathed in glorious black & white and set in Mexico during the early 70s, Roma centres on a maid and by extension the family that she works for.
Cuaron lets his camera linger with very calculated slow lengthy pans & dollys which are utterly mesmerising. While we don’t get takes quite as long or energetic as his previous work, somehow some of them are extremely stressful and had me holding my breath a few times throughout.
This combined with the black & white aesthetic and naturalistic lighting presents you with an absolute visual feast.
One of the things that really struck me about Roma is the sound design, like the Cinematography it is quite naturalistic and feels very real, as if you were standing right there with these people from this time.
The story can be happy, sad and everything in-between across its two hour runtime, and serves as a fantastic “slice of life” piece as you grow to love this family.
Roma is the one film this year that I’m going to actually call a masterpiece, at points of had a big smile on my face and at others I was absolutely devastated, go see this on the biggest screen possible because Alfonso has done it again with the utterly excellent ROMA.
Thanks to Adelaide Film Festival for inviting me along.
