2019 Winner, Roma

Roma

Director:  Alfonso Cuarón

Distributed by: Netflix

Released: November 2018

Country:  Mexico

I was thinkin' that maybe I'd get a maid
Find a place nearby for her to stay
Just someone to keep my house clean
Fix my meals and go away

--A Man Needs a Maid, Neil Young

Being a live-in maid seems like a pretty thankless job—I know I couldn’t do it.  First of all, I’m a slob, so my method of cleaning would be a lot of peering into rooms and saying, “Good enough.”  Also, when I cook I do a lot of tasting, so I think my employer would end up having to deduct from my paycheck to compensate for the free food.  But more importantly, it must be difficult in terms of getting attached to the family you work for, as it is for Cleo, in the Mexican Best Foreign Film of 2018, Roma.

Roma is the story of one maid, named Cleo, in an upper-middle class neighborhood in Mexico City. Cleo works for a family with small children, with the husband, a noted doctor, being mostly absent, and his wife Sofia resenting him for it.  Cleo isn’t particularly pretty or smart, but she works hard and clearly cares about the kids.  She is part of their lives and part of the family.

 

The film originates from the mind of Alfonso Cuarón, who is telling the story of his maid as he was

Yalitza Aparicio as Cleo;
Marina de Tavira as Sofia, her employer

growing up in Mexico.  Cuarón is best known to American audiences for his visually stunning but light-on-plot film Gravity from 2013.  Roma is a little more character-driven than that film, but as far as the aesthetics go, I found the film to be too cute by half.  The movie is in black-and-white, and I'm not sure why.  It made things seem more dated than the 1970 Mexico that is its setting.  Also, Cuarón goes a bit Kubrick from time to time, with long, long shots of nothing happening.  Sometimes this can be visually interesting, like the shot of the family garage’s floor during the opening credits.  But too often I found myself yelling a Monty Python-ish “Get on with it!”

There isn’t much plot in Roma, but there doesn’t need to be.  Cleo is a likeable character who shows strength and forbearance despite the challenges thrown at her, and you can’t help but root for her.  And when she sees dog poop on the garage floor, she cleans it up and doesn’t say, “Good enough.”

Cleo and the family

The Title:  Roma is the neighborhood in Mexico City, somewhat upscale but on the decline in 1970, when this movie is set.  The area is now a sort-of trendy hipster place, with art galleries and restaurants.

Culture:  The story takes place during a period of political stress in Mexico, and the latter portion of the film includes rioting that took place in the early 1970’s.  Cleo has a relationship with an unemployed dimwit who has been training with Los Halcones, a quasi-military group who thuggishly kept the peace for the government by using kung-fu moves and by using violence in general.

My dog and I could have used Cleo recently

More interesting is Cuarón’s pop culture references.  The movie features a variety of Mexican pop songs that were popular at the time, and we learn that even in Mexico, folks were putting Jesus Christ Superstar on their turntables.   But what comes through most is Cuarón’s love of the movies.  Two key scenes occur at movie theaters, as Cleo and her boyfriend take in  La Grande Vadrouille, a popular 1966 French comedy; and with the kids she sees Marooned, a 1969 American drama about astronauts.  Both movies feature an abandonment of one sort or another, (and one of the astronauts has a suspicious and odd resemblance to George Clooney, who starred in Gravity for Cuarón a few years ago).

Agenda danger:  Speaking of the theme of abandonment, Roma features two male characters that heinously abandon their families.  Men don’t come out looking too good in this film, seemingly incapable of fulfilling their paternal responsibilities.  Perhaps this is why, after all, a man needs a maid.

Best Picture that year:  Green Book

Rating:  For all the hype, with Cuarón winning Best Director and the film itself nominated for Best Picture (and the movie also won for Best Cinematography), I was a little underwhelmed.  But there was a charm to characters, the female ones anyway, that made it worth watching.  And if you have Netflix, this one is something you should make time for.

2018 Winner, A Fantastic Woman

A Fantastic Woman

Director:  Sebastián Lelio

Distributed by:  Sony Pictures Classics

Released:  Februay 2017

Country:  Chile

Imagine a woman, in her late 20’s or so, a waitress and an aspiring opera singer.  She is dating a rather wealthy man in his early 60’s, and has recently moved into his rather luxurious apartment.  The man is divorced or separated from his wife, with whom he has a nine-year-old daughter.  He left her for the younger woman, apparently unable or unwilling to keep his urges for the younger woman in check, thinking he is in love.  One day, the man falls suddenly ill after sex with the younger woman and dies in the hospital.  After his death, the woman still has the keys to the man’s car and apartment and takes her sweet time giving both of them up to her late lover’s family.  She insists on attending the dead man’s services in spite of the demand by the family that she stay away to spare their feelings, including that of the nine-year-old.  The question:  Is this a Fantastic Woman?

Ah, but I left out one smallest of small details—the woman, quite recently, went by the name of Daniel.  The Fantastic Woman is, you see, a transsexual named Marina.  And Marina seems nice enough, a person with insecurities and talents and the need for love, just like anyone else.  But because she was a man, she gets treated impolitely, even harshly, by a number of people she encounters after the death of her boyfriend, Orlando.

Marina and Old Orlando

For one thing, when she brings him to the hospital, the staff don’t consider her family and therefore don’t allow her into his room.  While waiting for Marina to take him to the hospital, Orlando takes a tumble down a flight of stairs, resulting in some bruising and a contusion on his head.  Marina is questioned by police about it and about the fact that she inexplicably ran away from the hospital for a time after bringing Orlando there; they wrongly suspect there may have been domestic abuse.  During questioning they check Marina’s ID and take pictures of Marina’s entire body to check for bruises--as someone puts it, she "hasn't had the operation yet."  Orlando’s ex-wife isn’t too big a fan either.  She tells Marina that when Orlando left her, she told him that Marina was a perversion.  She calls Marina a “chimera,” which seems to cut Marina deeply.  I had to look up the definition--"an illusion or fabrication of the mind."  Ouch?

From what I could gather, the point of the film was to elicit sympathy for Marina and antipathy for those who mistreat Marina.  The plot was rather thin and the last 30 minutes or so seemed to drag on endlessly with no real resolution.  Basically, it seems what makes Marina a fantastic woman is that she is a victim.

The films is very skillfully and aesthetically photographed, a real pleasure to look at.  Santiago, Chile, comes off looking bright, sophisticated, and colorful.  The acting was fine, though I found Daniella Vega, who plays Marina, to be a bit one-note, not really moving beyond a sort of dull melancholy.  Overall, this wasn’t a bad movie, really, just an overpraised one.  Again, had the main character not been transgendered/transexual, I would have still found Marina to be hard to like.  But while the Academy, the critics, and whoever wrote the film wanted the viewer to find Marina to be “fantastic,” I did not.

Some guy stuck on an elevator with Marina and Orlando's wife: AWKWARD!

The Title:   Una mujer fantastic.  We live in a time in which one has to be careful when one discusses any LGBTQ in a manner that is anything but fully accepting.  In many circles, it is frowned upon, even illegal, to not accept a person’s gender as something other than what they were born as.  That said, I found it interesting that the protagonist in this film is labeled “fantastic,” a word which can be defined as “based on fantasy, not real.”  I suppose the writer of the film, which very much is sympathetic to Marina, may have been trying to be ironic, or witty, or something.

The culture:  First Best Foreign Film winner from Chile, it comes off as a slightly less than conservative country, with vestiges of its Catholic heritage intact. 

Agenda danger:  Frankly, I had a bit of a headache from being hit over the head with the message of the film, which was that those who don’t accept trans-sexuality are numerous and despicable.  In one scene, a group of thugs terrorize Marina with slurs and wrap her head in scotch tape.  But even the people who seem to be polite to Marina hold an obvious dislike for who she is or has chosen to be.

Scene from The Shape of Water

Best Picture that year:  The Shape of Water.  Hoo boy, it seems Oscar had a real agenda on its (his? her?) mind this year.  This Guillermo del Toro film tells the story of a woman who has a hankering for a fish.  And I don’t mean she enjoys a good tuna fish sandwich every now and again; I mean she enjoys getting boned by a fish man, obviously not a fillet.  That story, while more “fantastic” than A Fantastic Woman, is even more blatant in its message that all relationships of a sexual nature are equally acceptable.  Even if one agrees with this concept wholeheartedly, it's hard not to feel preached to in watching these two films.

Rating:  I didn’t find this film fantastic by any definition.  Mostly, it was a bore.