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While audiences have been weeping over Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper's bad romance in "A Star Is Born," another tear-jerker has emerged as the movie to beat this awards season: "Roma," Netflix's black-and-white, Spanish-language gamble, which has been breathlessly hailed as a masterpiece since it debuted at Venice Film Festival.
The understated yet gut-wrenching drama, which has sterling reviews (97% positive) on Rotten Tomatoes, charts a year in the life of Cleo (newcomer Yalitza Aparicio), a live-in maid for a middle-class family in 1970s Mexico City.
The movie is now in select theaters nationwide and streaming on Netflix, which has hopes for its first major Oscar victory. (Experts on awards site GoldDerby.com unanimously predict "Roma" will earn a best-picture nomination.) Already, it's earned three Golden Globe and seven Critics' Choice awards nominations, and been named one of National Board of Review's top 10 films of 2018.
But selling most moviegoers on a slow-burning, subtitled period piece will be an uphill battle, and Netflix's refusal to release streaming and box-office numbers makes it tough to truly gauge the success of "Roma." If you're still on the fence about watching, Cuaron, 57, shares a comprehensive guide to everything you should know before diving in.
1. The film is inspired by Cuaron's childhood nanny.
"Roma" chronicles the joyous highs and devastating lows of Cleo as she helps raise her boss Sofia's (Marina de Tavira) four young children. Cleo is modeled on Cuaron's real-life nanny, Liboria “Libo” Rodríguez, a dark-skinned, indigenous woman who joined his family when he was 9 months old and was fundamental in his early upbringing. (They remain close today.)
As Cuaron grew older, "I started realizing the contradiction that exists, in which one member of my family comes from a different social and ethnic background," he says. "It took the process of making this film to deeply recognize her as a woman ... in a world in which race and class are completely interlinked."
2. He relied on memory, rather than research, to write it.
The filmmaker based the screenplay primarily on his own recollections, but also his conversations with Libo.
"It was written almost like a stream of consciousness," Cuaron says. "I just kept digging and digging, assuming that I'm not telling the truth of things as they happened, but how I remember them."
3. None of the actors knew what they were shooting until they got to the set.
His approach was similarly loose during filming: Cuaron mostly tried to cast actors who looked like the people he remembered growing up, and didn't give them scripts for scenes until the day of shooting.
To make the movie seem more natural and authentic, "I would talk to (the actors) and stage scenes separately, not as a group – whispering different instructions to them, most of them contradicting each other," Cuaron says. "I was waiting for chaos and accidents to happen. I had never done that (on a film)."
4. The lead is played by a first-time actress.
Oaxaca native Aparicio, 24, won out over more than 3,000 women who auditioned to play Cleo. Then studying to become a preschool teacher, she went to a casting call on a whim with her pregnant sister, who wound up backing out last minute. Aparicio took her place and submitted an audition tape, which entailed answering personal questions rather than reading scripted dialogue.
"I was just interested in hearing them talking, like, who you are, what (do) you like, what are your dreams," Cuaron says. "When I saw (Aparicio), I was like, 'Wow, she's so perfect.' She has an amazing softness combined with an amazing smile, but what is behind all of that stuff is an immense intelligence."
5. If you watch "Roma" on Netflix, stick with it.
"Roma" was shot on crisp 65mm black-and-white film and uses state-of-the-art surround sound, creating a rich visual and aural experience that's best enjoyed in a theater on the biggest screen possible. But for those who view it at home, Cuaron recommends turning the sound up and switching off the TV's motion smoothing, a default setting on many new models that's most often used for video games and watching sports.
Most importantly, "I ask that you give 'Roma' a little bit of time," Cuaron says. "There's a tendency for people to switch from one thing to another if there's not immediate satisfaction. But if you give it a tiny bit of patience, you'll have the most amazing, beautiful, emotional experience. And if you give yourself time to immerse yourself in it, you’ll pass very quickly through the filtering of language and black and white, and those elements will actually strengthen your experience."
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