Alfonso Cuaron’s immersive, black-and-white, semi-autobiographical film is set in 1971 in Mexico City’s Colonia Roma district. The opening scene is an optical illusion: the camera reveals a courtyard floor which turns into a mirror of an airplane in the sky above when soapy water flows across it. It’s being mopped by Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), an indigenous Mixteco from the southern state of Oaxaca; she works as a live-in maid/nanny for an upper-middle-class family. Status-conscious Dr. Antonio (Fernando Grediaga) is often away on ‘business trips’ and drives a Ford Galaxy that’s too big for the carport. Short-tempered Senora Sofia (Marina de Tavira) is harried. Their four school-age children adore Cleo, who stoically cleans up the turds left by their romping Alsatian. Guileless Cleo has a boyfriend, Fermin (Jorge Antonio Guerrero), who’s devoted to martial arts. Before long, Dr. Antonio abandons Sofia for a mistress, just as selfish Fermin leaves Cleo pregnant and alone. When the violent political upheaval known as the Corpus Christi Massacre—in which nearly 120 student protestors were killed by government-supported paramilitaries—doleful Cleo views the mayhem through the window of the furniture store where she goes into labor while shopping for a crib. Sensitively written, insightfully directed and vibrantly photographed by Cuaron, it’s epic, yet intricately detailed in its depiction of loneliness. Production designer Eugenio Caballero found an abandoned house scheduled for demolition and recreated it to resemble Cuaron’s boyhood home. To insure authenticity because most of his actors are non-professionals, Cuaron shot in linear order, not revealing the plot twists to his cast. The Oscar-winning Roma is a poignant, neorealist masterpiece. Highly recommended. (S. Granger)