Roma

This beautifully shot film tells three intertwining stories in a Mexican household in the early 70s – the breakdown of the parent’s marriage, the pregnancy of one of the maids, and the increasing political unrest in the streets. Full of lush visuals and crowd scenes, in gorgeous black and white, the more personal stories are told with delicacy and care (albeit neither are exactly presented with a lot of urgency). The more political story, though, tends to be only touched on when spectacle is needed (as with a sudden uprising near the end) rather than presented with any coherent information about its causes and rationales – telling the story though the viewpoint of the pregnant maid means that, given she’s not particularly politically active, we can only be nearby observers rather than getting any understanding of why there’s unrest, what it’s coming from and why it’s slipping out of control.

And yes, a film is under no responsibility to particularly represent any individual political point of view – but in this case, presenting the politics as spectacle without actually trying to understand them means we get a fairly shallow view of what could be a complex and intriguing element of the film. It turns what could have been an incisive film into something more sentimental and fuzzy. And as a sentimental and fuzzy presentation of personal history, it’s quite a gorgeous looking film. I just wish the ideas underneath the beauty meant a bit more.