{"id":3319,"date":"2018-12-10T15:11:37","date_gmt":"2018-12-10T14:11:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=3319"},"modified":"2018-12-10T18:58:41","modified_gmt":"2018-12-10T17:58:41","slug":"3319","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=3319","title":{"rendered":"‘Roma’: Mexico City in the 1970s"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I like a director with a truly visual imagination<\/strong> – which surprisingly few have \u2013 and Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n qualifies in every way.\u00a0 I loved Gravity<\/em> for the formality of its visual approach – almost the entire film was shot on the same focal length of lens, apart from the \u2018dream sequence\u2019 which was shot on a slightly wider one so the audience was disconcerted without quite knowing why.<\/p>\n

But I was still not quite prepared for quite how good his new movie Roma<\/em> is. Cuar\u00f3n was his own director of photography, and his black-and-white camerawork is luminous and inspired.<\/p>\n

I also have a strong affinity for the place and time – Mexico City in the 1970s where I lived for a while and wrote Tequila Oil: Getting Lost in Mexico<\/a>. <\/em>Although of course I remember it in colour.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What impresses me so much is the control and confidence with which Cuar\u00f3n wields his camera. The film genuinely inhabits the space: mainly a suburban house in Mexico City but also some diverse landscapes and startling juxtapositions.<\/p>\n

When I lived in Mexico City the arthouse cinemas showed a lot of Fellini and this reminded me of them – particularly when we visit the wasteland outside Mexico City where, as a human cannonball is shot into a safety net, we follow the film’s heroine in search of the father of her child.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This is not some softshoe indie shuffle, but a film with heart and purpose. At its heart is the Mixteca maid Cleo (played by non-professional newcomer Yalitza Aparicio) who\u00a0 has a quiet and moving resignation in the face of some of the humiliations and tragedies life throws at her.\u00a0I defy anybody to watch the penultimate scene when the children are swimming in a dangerous ocean and she wades into the waves to try to save them without a lump to the throat.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a shame that Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez never allowed anybody to film One Hundred Years of Solitude<\/em>, as Cuar\u00f3n would be the perfect director for the project, perhaps as a longer box set.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I like a director with a truly visual imagination – which surprisingly few have \u2013 and Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n qualifies in every way.\u00a0 I loved Gravity for the formality of its visual approach – almost the entire film was shot on the same focal length of lens, apart from the \u2018dream sequence\u2019 which was shot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[135,8,1],"tags":[153],"class_list":["post-3319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films","category-mexico","category-uncategorized","tag-roma-movie-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3319"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3319"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3338,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3319\/revisions\/3338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}