Nosh 136: 'Roma' & Top 12 Movies of 2018

David Elliott

         

Flix Nosh is a personal movie menu, new each Friday.

APPETIZER: Review of Roma

In 2001 Alfonso Cuarón splashed into view with the playful, erotic Y Tu Mamá También. He went on to direct one of the best Harry Potters (2004’s Prisoner of Azkaban), but with Great Expectations, Gravity and Children of Men he seemed to fall into a conceptual grid of themes. Now Cuarón returns to roots, confidently. His wonderfully populated Roma is the most elegantly layered canvas of city life since Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty (2013). It seems odd that this absolutely Mexican movie is called Roma, yet with due respect to Sorrentino’s glowing Rome, Fellini’s exuberant Roma and even the Roma (gypsies), Cuarón earns his title. Roma is the story’s bursting section of Mexico City.

Shot almost entirely there and largely pulled from Cuarón's memories, the film was written and photographed by him, using silky-silver tones that deliver emotional flow without exotic tropical color. In 1971 the capitol city still faces student protests and strikes, following the state-ordered massacres of 1968. The maid and nanny Cleodegaria Gutiérrez is utterly non-political, a sturdy little refugee from Oaxaca poverty. She is gratefully dutiful for “her” family: the mildly spoiled, sparky mother Sofia (fine Marina de Tavira), Sofia’s self-involved doctor husband and five delightful kids (the mascot is Marco Graf’s Pepe). Cuarón saturates us in their daily rhythms, giving virtual roles to the dog Burrón and the Ford Galaxy crammed into a narrow garage.

The home is a microcosmic reflector of the huge city, and each crisis finds intimate perspective. The father’s radical decision avoids pyrotechnics but impacts everyone. A temblor shakes up a maternity ward. Cleo’s visit to a furniture store suddenly endures the spillover of a street protest. Her own crisis is the most personal, yet without rhetoric or sudsy slop. There are some obvious signifiers, like a doll left in a gutter, and a forest fire that rallies solidarity (Mexico, land of murals, loves symbols). But the many grace notes include the sustained vista of the beautiful old Teatro Metropolitan, where customers suffer a dippy French war farce (a bad gift globally, shown in the U.S. as Don’t Look Now, We’re Being Shot At). Cuarón is good at such juxtapositions, as when Cleo tries to decipher her loutish boyfriend, nakedly preening his martial arts routine (was Cuarón inspired by a similar episode of a soccer player in The Great Beauty?). 

Roma is an episodic vision, but to call it a telenovela with aesthetic ambitions would deny its superbly textured feelings and potent, prismatic focus. Its humanism is not sloganized. Its feminism is more contra-macho than anti-male. The excellent cast pivots on the pensive, soft-spoken but absolutely lived-in performance of Yalitza Aparicio as Cleo. Her hospital emergency is unforgettably affecting, her first visit to a beach (echoing Y Tu Mamá También) is equally resonant. Any sensitive visitor to Mexico or Central America has pondered these small peasant women, with their Mayan features and blocky bodies that seem to incarnate the patience of eternity. After centuries they have their movie icon, Cleo of Roma.      

SALAD (A List)
Twelve Best Movies of 2018, as reviewed on this site:

1. Roma – Reviewed above.   

2. Wildlife – Paul Dano’s impeccable directing debut examines a family’s breakdown in 1950s Montana. Superbly acted by Ed Oxenbould, Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal (See Nosh 133, Dec. 7, below).

3. Call Me by Your Name – Probably the finest coming-of-age film with a gay edge. Timothée Chalomet, micro-tonally subtle, never just poses in Luca Guadagnino’s warm Italian succulence (Nosh 97, Feb. 2).

4. Isle of Dogs– Canines romp, rule, scheme and scratch in another triumph of deluxe high design and sly wit from Wes Anderson (Nosh 106, April 20).

5. Vice – With fervor, Adam (The Big Short) McKay chops former V.P. Dick Cheney (stunning Christian Bale) into juicy-bitsy pieces (review appears next week).

6. Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool – Annette Bening’s topping role portrays the last phase of film star Gloria Grahame. Jamie Bell is her English fan turned lover, in Paul McGuigan’s homage beyond nostalgia (Nosh 99, Feb. 22).

7. Darkest Hour – Gary Oldman got a worthy Oscar for playing Churchill in his toughest war year, directed with power by Joe Wright (Nosh 94, Jan. 12).

8. Won’t You Be My Neighbor? – Morgan Neville’s moving documentary traces the life and good works of endearing TV icon Fred Rogers (Nosh 115, July 6).

9. Free Solo – Quietly obsessed Alex Honnold becomes the first person to climb the sheer wall of El Capitan without ropes or crampons. This documentary has an astonishingly intimate, immediate tension (Nosh 129, Oct. 26).

10. A Fantastic Woman – Diva Daniela Vega sustains the risky bravura of a pioneering Chilean trans. Director Sebastián Lelio explores the core of both hip camp and Latin homophobia (Nosh 102, March 23).

11. BlacKkKlansman – Some caricatural excess doesn’t hurt Spike Lee’s spiking of that old devil Klan. Richly funny but serious are Adam Driver and John David Washington (Nosh 120, Aug. 17).

12. Eighth Grade – After countless teen-girl movies, here’s a first-rate one that overhauls cliches. Terrific Elsie Fisher, 14, was directed with a keen eye and savvy heart by Bo Burnham (Nosh 119, Aug. 10).

(Other pleasures: At Eternity's Gate, Beautiful Boy, Bombshell: Hedy Lamarr, Boy Erased, The Cakemaker, Can You Forgive Me?, Final Portrait, Green Book, Lean on Pete, Leave No Trace, Let the Sunshine In, Loveless, Maria by Callas, A Quiet Place, RBG, Red Sparrow, The Shape of Water, Widows, You Were Never Really Here.)

WINE (Vin Orsonaire de Chateau Welles)

Orson is away this week, contemplating his newly salvaged The Other Side of the Wind, as I hope to do before long.

ENTRÉE (Starlight Rising)

This week I give my book a hiatus, but feel free to order Starlight Rising via Amazon, Nook or Kindle.

DESSERT (An Image)

A great movie image is more than a still, it’s a distillation.

Ed Oxenbould (front) is the son bewildered by the cracking marriage of Carey Mulligan and (rear) Jake Gyllenhaal, in Wildlife (June Films, 2018; director Paul Dano, photographed by Diego García).

For previous Noshes, scroll below.