123 - Roma

Much to Mike's disdain - he throws tantrums about Netflix films - we settled in with a KFC to discuss Alfonso Cuarón's Roma, a semi-autobiographical film about the live-in housekeeper to an upper middle class Mexican family. Carefully composed and inflected with a neorealist aesthetic, it's been making countless year-end lists and is being touted as potentially Netflix's first Best Picture nominee at the Academy Awards, so Mike wasn't allowed to say no. The film is remarkable for depicting modern-day indigenous Mexicans, people to whose existence many outside the Americas might not have ever given any thought. Yalitza Aparicio, Roma's star, is a non-professional actor of Mixtec and Triqui origin, and simply her appearance is interesting, let alone the film's use of Mixtec language (Mike gets this name wrong at first but don't hold it against him) and its development of the indigenous population as lower class workers. We consider the use of black-and-white imagery - José questioning what it brings to the film - and the ways in which the sound design and long panning shots attempt to place the viewer within the film's environments. Mike explains a prejudice he holds against "personal" films, and José considers Roma's place alongside Cuarón's previous work, and the melodrama of the birth scene. Mediático, a film and media blog focused on Latin American, Latinx and Iberian media, took an immediate and deep interest in Roma and marshalled eight academics to each write a short essay on the film, and we refer to some of the points raised throughout the podcast. The dossier is well worth reading, will enrich your experience of the film, and can be found here: http://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/mediatico/2018/12/24/introduction-to-the-special-dossier-on-roma-alfonso-cuaron/ (The links to the essays are on the right hand side of the webpage.) In addition, the dossier refers on several occasions to Richard Brody's review of the film in The New Yorker, in which he is critical of the lack of a voice given to the main character and finds the film asks more questions of the world it depicts than it answers. We refer to this, too, and you can read it here: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/theres-a-voice-missing-in-alfonso-cuarons-roma As for us? We find areas of interest, things to both agree and disagree with, in all the articles we read. José was deeply riveted by Roma despite a reservation or two and continues to see Cuarón as a great director. Mike was less interested, admitting that had he been watching the film alone, he would likely have turned it off before the halfway point; an issue with watching things at home that isn't as pressing at the cinema (he wouldn't have walked out of a screening). But that's a tantrum for another day. Recorded on 1st January 2019.