Roma (2018 film)

''Roma'' is a 2018 historical drama film written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, who also produced, shot, and co-edited it. Set in 1970 and 1971, ''Roma'' follows the life of a live-in indigenous ( Mixteco) housekeeper of an upper-middle-class Mexican family. It is a semi-autobiographical take on Cuarón's upbringing in Mexico City's Colonia Roma neighborhood. The film stars Yalitza Aparicio and Marina de Tavira. It is an international co-production between Mexico and the United States.

''Roma'' premiered on 30 August 2018 at the 75th Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Lion. It began a limited theatrical run in the United States on 21 November 2018, before streaming on Netflix in the U.S. and other territories starting on 14 December 2018.

''Roma'' received a number of accolades, with ten nominations at the 91st Academy Awards, among them Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress (Aparicio) and Best Supporting Actress (de Tavira). It became the first Mexican entry to win Best Foreign Language Film, and the first non-English-language to win both Best Cinematography and Best Director for the same person in a single night. It also won two awards at the 76th Golden Globe Awards, four awards (including Best Picture) at the 24th Critics' Choice Awards, and four awards (including Best Film) at the 72nd British Academy Film Awards.

Plot

In 1970, Cleodegaria "Cleo" Gutiérrez is a Mixtec live-in maid in an upper-middle-class household in Mexico City's Colonia Roma neighborhood. The household consists of the mother, Sofía; the father, Antonio; their four school-aged children, Pepe, Sofi, Toño and Paco; and Sofía's mother, Teresa. Antonio, a medical doctor, often leaves for business conferences, but Sofía's distressed reactions to his absences suggest he is having an extramarital affair.

Meanwhile, Cleo believes she might be pregnant. She tells her boyfriend, Fermín, who pretends to be supportive but immediately abandons her at a movie theatre. She nervously reveals her news to Sofía, who provides emotional comfort and takes her to the hospital, confirming her pregnancy. Sofía then takes Cleo and the children to a family friend's hacienda for New Year celebrations. Recent tensions over land in the area arise, and a large forest fire erupts that the partygoers help extinguish.

Back in the city, Cleo sees Antonio and a young woman flirting on the street. She looks for Fermín, traveling to an impoverished district on the edge of the city, where she finds him training at a military-style camp run by Professor Zovek. Fermín denies that her baby is his, threatening to beat Cleo and their child if she talks to him again.

Cleo returns to the city, and the increasingly distraught Sofía tries unsuccessfully to conceal her husband's infidelity from their children. With the baby almost due, Teresa takes Cleo shopping for a crib downtown. Suddenly a student protest outside the store turns into the Corpus Christi massacre of 10 June 1971 as a paramilitary group, Los Halcones ("the Falcons"), attacks the protesters. The militants chase a student into the store and murder him. Fermín, appearing as one of Los Halcones, points a gun at Cleo and Teresa before wordlessly exiting. Then Cleo's water breaks. The violence in the streets slows traffic and her attempt to get to the hospital. When she arrives, Antonio briefly appears, reassures her, then makes an excuse to leave. She cries in agony as her baby girl is delivered stillborn.

Later, Sofía takes Cleo and the children on a family outing to the beaches at Tuxpan. Sofía tells her children that she and their father are separating and that the outing is giving him time to collect his belongings from their home. At the beach, a strong current almost drowns Sofi and Paco, but Cleo wades in and saves them, despite not knowing how to swim. Sofía and the children affirm their love for Cleo, all of them holding each other and crying, while Cleo confesses that she did not want her baby to be born. The group returns home to find the house reorganized, and Cleo prepares a load of clothes for washing.

Cast

Production

On 8 September 2016, it was announced that Alfonso Cuarón would write and direct a project focusing on a Mexican family living in Mexico City in the 1970s. Production was set to begin in fall 2016 by his production company, Esperanto Filmoj, and Participant Media. The film was produced by Cuarón, Gabriela Rodríguez, and Nicolás Celis. Filming took place from 27 November 2016 to 14 March 2017. Cuarón said he "just wrote the script without looking back. I started page one, I finish it, I never read it again as a whole. I never share it with anyone."

''Roma'' was shot in sequence, which Yalitza Aparicio, who plays Cleo, said helped her. She was most terrified by the scene on the beach, as she—like her character—could not swim. Before being cast, Aparicio, who had recently completed graduate training in preschool education, had no acting experience or formal training in acting. She has joked that the only "acting" she has ever done was lying to her parents and teachers.

Filming took place on location throughout Mexico City, as Cuarón felt shooting on soundstages would be difficult for first-time actors. The movie theatre serving as a recurring location was the Teatro Metropólitan, where Cuarón's ''Y tu mamá también'' premiered in 2001.

Robbery on set

On 1 November 2016, the crew of ''Roma'' was the target of a robbery. According to the studio, "two women were hit, five crew members were hospitalized, and cellphones, wallets, and jewelry were stolen" during the attack. The crew reportedly arrived to set up filming for the day when a group of city workers approached the crew and tried to shut down filming. The crew said they had permission to film, but the workers persisted and a brawl broke out between the groups.

Music

Release

In April 2018, it was announced that Netflix had acquired the film's distribution rights. Netflix movie chief Scott Stuber acquired the rights based on 12 minutes of footage he was shown.

A teaser trailer was released on 25 July 2018.

The film had its world premiere at the 75th Venice International Film Festival on 30 August 2018, and made its North American debut the next day at the Telluride Film Festival. The film also played at the Toronto International Film Festival. It screened at the San Sebastián International Film Festival on 27 September 2018, the New York Film Festival on 5October 2018, and the New Orleans Film Festival as the Centerpiece Film on 22 October 2018. It was released at independent theatres in Mexico on 21 November, though the Cinépolis and Cinemex chains refused, as they demanded a longer exclusivity window than Netflix offered. Released digitally on 14 December, the film was watched by 3.2 million households between January and February 2019, with a peak of 418,000 viewers on 23 February, the day before the Academy Awards.

After ''Roma'' was nominated for Best Picture at the 91st Academy Awards, AMC Theatres and Regal Cinemas both issued statements that ''Roma'' would not be part of the lineup at either chain's annual Best Picture showcase. AMC said this was because it never received a license from Netflix to screen ''Roma'' in its theaters. Both theaters chains have refused to screen films from Netflix due to their policies that require a minimum of 90 days between theatrical release and home viewing.

The film's eligibility for the Academy Awards was a matter of controversy, since despite its limited theatrical release, many believed it to have been made for home viewing. In March 2019, Steven Spielberg expressed disapproval of streaming films being eligible for Academy Awards, and the timing of his comments led many to believe they were a response to ''Roma'', though he did not mention the film by name.

The film received the biggest promotional campaign in Netflix's history, with anywhere from $25 million to $50 million in advertisements (Netflix insisted on the former figure and its rivals on the latter). One unique tactic included sending out thousands of six-pound ''Roma'' coffee table books (worth $175) to awards voters, which led a consultant to say "the shipping charges cost more than some movies' advertising budgets".

Reception

Box office

Netflix has not publicly disclosed box-office figures for ''Roma'', but sources deduced that the film made $90,000–120,000 from three theaters in its opening weekend, 23–25 November, and $200,000 over the five-day Thanksgiving frame, including selling out theaters in Los Angeles and New York City. Had the results been officially reported, its approximate venue average of $66,600 would have ranked among the best ever for a foreign-language film. In its second weekend of theatrical release, the film expanded to 17 theaters. IndieWire estimated the film grossed $110,000 from four of them, including selling out in San Francisco, and that the film would "easily be the best grossing subtitled film" of 2018. In its third weekend, the film made another estimated $500,000 from 100 theaters, for a running total of $900,000.

Despite being released on Netflix on 14 December, the film expanded to 145 theaters and grossed an estimated $362,000 for a four-week total of $1.4 million. It made another $300,000 the next week and $150,000 the week after that. By its ninth week of release, the film had made an estimated $2.8 million. In the weekend following the announcement of its 10 Oscar nominations, ''Roma'' grossed another $175,000 from around 80 theaters, pushing it past $3 million, the first foreign-language film to do so domestically since '' Ida'' in 2013.

Critical response

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, ''Roma'' holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, "''Roma'' finds writer-director Alfonso Cuarón in complete, enthralling command of his visual craft—and telling the most powerfully personal story of his career." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 96 out of 100, based on 50 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". It is the 56th highest-rated film of all time on the site, and the best-reviewed of 2018.

In ''The Guardian'', Peter Bradshaw wrote: "''Roma'' is thrilling, engrossing, moving—and just entirely amazing, an adjectival pileup of wonder. He has reached back into his own childhood to create an intensely personal story." Manohla Dargis of ''The New York Times'' called the film "an expansive, emotional portrait of life buffeted by violent forces, and a masterpiece" and praised Cuarón's use of "intimacy and monumentality to express the depths of ordinary life".

Slavoj Žižek argued that people were appreciating the film for the wrong reasons, claiming that people were appreciating Cleo's grace without seeing how she must break free from the moral constraints placed upon her.

According to a study of 65 indigeneity-oriented fictional features produced in Latin America in the 21st century, the film can be considered as a catalyst for change in the blueprint for representations of Indigenous characters in cinema. ''Roma'' depicts Cleo, the main Indigenous character, with a level of detail that surpasses stereotypical portrayals. Gonzalez Rodriguez asserts that the film is a unique example of ''syntonic indigeneity'', challenging traditional representations of the Indigenous ''Other'' as an exotic figure (''histrionic indigeneity'').

Accolades

''Roma'' won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice International Film Festival. At the Toronto International Film Festival, it was named second runner-up for the People's Choice Award.

The film received 10 nominations for the 91st Academy Awards, including Best Picture—tying with '' The Favourite'' as the most-nominated film. It is the first film distributed primarily by a streaming service to be nominated for Best Picture. It was tied with ''Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'' (2000) for the most Oscar nominations received by a film not in English until '' Emilia Pérez'', in French, received 13 in 2025. It won three Academy Awards, including Best Foreign Language Film, becoming the first Mexican film to win this honor.

''Roma'' received American Film Institute's 2018 AFI Special Award, as it was not eligible for AFI Movies of the Year due to its non-U.S. status. ''Time'' magazine and the New York Film Critics Circle named it the best film of 2018, and the National Board of Review named it one of the ten best films of 2018.

The February 2020 issue of ''New York'' lists ''Roma'' as one of the Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars.

Home media

On 15 November 2019, it was confirmed that ''Roma'' would be receiving a DVD and Blu-ray release from The Criterion Collection, marking the first time a Netflix original film was added to the library, and one of the rare times that Netflix had permitted one of their films for physical media release. Netflix described the announcement as "such an honor". To coincide with the Criterion Collection release, in February 2020, Netflix released a behind-the-scenes documentary named ''Road to Roma''.

See also

* List of Mexican submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
* List of submissions to the 91st Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film

References

External links

Official site
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{{Mexican submission for Academy Awards

2018 films
2018 drama films
2018 independent films
2010s feminist films
2010s American films
2010s Mexican films
2010s pregnancy films
2010s Spanish-language films
American black-and-white films
American drama films
American pregnancy films
BAFTA winners (films)
Best Film BAFTA Award winners
Best Foreign Film in the Spanish Language Goya Award Winners
Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award winners
Best Foreign Language Film BAFTA Award winners
Best Foreign Language Film Golden Globe winners
Best Picture Ariel Award winners
Colonia Roma
Films about maids
Films directed by Alfonso Cuarón
Films produced by Alfonso Cuarón
Films set in 1970
Films set in 1971
Films set in Mexico City
Films shot in Mexico
Films whose cinematographer won the Best Cinematography Academy Award
Films whose director won the Best Directing Academy Award
Films whose director won the Best Direction BAFTA Award
Films whose director won the Best Director Golden Globe
Films with screenplays by Alfonso Cuarón
Golden Lion winners
Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film winners
Mexican black-and-white films
Mexican drama films
Mexican pregnancy films
Mixtec-language films
Netflix original films
Participant (company) films
Satellite Award–winning films
Semi-autobiographical films
Spanish-language American films
Spanish-language drama films