Roma, by Alfonso Cuarón

This is a very good film, tender and moving. Not explicitly presented as a childhood memoir, it clearly comes out as one by the matter-of-factly, non-judgemental way the story is told. We get the depiction of the ordinary family life of a middle-class Mexican family in early 70s Mexico City (I had to google to know that Roma refers to the neighbourhood where they lived), including the take for granted family servants, an integral part of life then, considered as belonging to the household, beningly treated as long as they kept to their place, and the background social and political events, viewed as they would be remembered by a child - vaguely confusing and not analized, just experienced.

I think that's why the main character Cleo, the maid, seems so passive and devoid of class consciousness - she is seen through the eyes of the children she cared for. But class relations are very much shown through the way her life is shown, and her relationship with her boss, the kind and upset mother - she's cherished and protected but always clearly like a lesser person, a kind of child in a way, a member of the extended family, as faithful household servants used to be considered at the time.

The movie is beautifully shot in black and white, and aesthetically it works. Yet, I somehow would like to have seen it in colour. I was a child at the 70s, and I remember those times as an epoch of garish colours - the clothes, the tiles, even the furniture - it was a time of boldly unapologizing bad taste, and I'm sure it was the same in Mexico as it was in Portugal and Cape Vert, where I lived at the time.