Cuaron, acting as his own cinematographer (his usual collaborator Emmanuel Lubezki wasn’t available), treats the family’s lair with a mix of intense curiosity and reverence. Most of Roma’s action is confined to a facsimile of Cuaron’s childhood home – a sprawling, intricately detailed house filled with screaming children, quarrelling adults and sagging bookcases. Roma's narrative is pulled from Cuaron’s own childhood memories of growing up in the titular Mexico City neighbourhood. Cuaron has created a masterpiece beyond reproach – critic-proof in the best, most terrifying possible way. The responsibility, and extreme privilege, of being able to critique such a work just doesn’t seem fair. I could spend the next several hundred words doling out superlatives – and I will – but the words “sublime” and “dazzling” and “brilliant” fail to match just how tremendous a work Roma is. Whatever the moment, it didn’t take long to know that there was no way I would ever be able to appropriately articulate what Cuaron accomplishes in Roma. Just as likely, it was the scene where a bustling crowd files into a movie theatre, as eager to be transported as we already are, steeped deep inside Cuaron’s world. Perhaps it was the point when a gigantic Ford Galaxy squeezes itself into a far-too-small alley, a brief moment of comic relief that doubles as a metaphor for the scrapes Roma’s central clan are set to endure.

Maybe it was during the film’s opening three minutes, when Cuaron’s camera is focused squarely on a simple stone floor, soapy water rhythmically washing over its tiles in a hypnotic groove, the image of a gently whooshing commercial airliner cutting across the reflection. There was no exact moment that my troubling realization arrived.

Roma alfonso cuaron movie