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Roma: Screenplay
The most personal project to date from Academy Award (R)-winning director and writer Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Children of Men, Y Tu Mama Tambien), ROMA follows Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a young domestic worker for a family in the middle-class neighborhood of Roma in Mexico City. Delivering an artful love letter to the women who raised him, Cuarón draws on his own childhood to create a vivid and emotional portrait of domestic strife and social hierarchy amidst political turmoil of the 1970s. Cuarón's first project since the groundbreaking Gravity in 2013, ROMA will be available in theaters and on Netflix later this year.
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Published January 1, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 22, 2019
It’s a really solid script. Cuarón’s eye for detail and recreation - even in the stage directions - is astonishing. It’s interesting how the script does a much better job of keeping the narrative focused on Cleo.
February 23, 2019
As the only screenplay nominee this year shot in black-and-white, what really jumps out to me in Alfonso Cuaron's Roma screenplay is the use of color. Cuaron has such a specific idea in mind for how he wants this world to look - because this is a semi-autobiographical take on his life - and it's odd to me that he sees it as this vibrant, colorful world, when the finished project will be completely black-and-white.
I think that specificity of Cuaron's story comes through in Roma, especially since he feels the need to name every extra and give them an age, despite how irrelevant they might be to the overall story. This is a story that Cuaron lived, and through his screenplay, he's trying to get all those memories out on paper.
My biggest problem about Cuaron's film was that it pretends like this is Cleo's story, when in fact, it's really about Cuaron's surrogate family and Cleo's experiences on the fringes of that. In the screenplay, I don't feel that way. The screenplay at least makes this feel like Cleo's story, and I'll be curious if I change my mind on the perspective of the film once I revisit it. Overall, I find Roma to be a thorough, impassioned telling of Cuaron's childhood, but I don't necessarily know if that went on to make a great film.
I think that specificity of Cuaron's story comes through in Roma, especially since he feels the need to name every extra and give them an age, despite how irrelevant they might be to the overall story. This is a story that Cuaron lived, and through his screenplay, he's trying to get all those memories out on paper.
My biggest problem about Cuaron's film was that it pretends like this is Cleo's story, when in fact, it's really about Cuaron's surrogate family and Cleo's experiences on the fringes of that. In the screenplay, I don't feel that way. The screenplay at least makes this feel like Cleo's story, and I'll be curious if I change my mind on the perspective of the film once I revisit it. Overall, I find Roma to be a thorough, impassioned telling of Cuaron's childhood, but I don't necessarily know if that went on to make a great film.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews