Roma Wins Golden Lion at Venice; Women Without Men

The image of everything on the water is like a bubble that can burst at any moment; like a strange and mysterious dream, like life itself. Then we realize that it is the courtyard of a house where most of the film's events will take place. We see an airplane passing over the water, an airplane that appears several times throughout the film, and in the end, we will see its image again on this water of the courtyard; a woman's dream of flight? This is the beginning of Alfonso Cuarón's black and white and astonishing film titled 'Roma' which won the Golden Lion at this year's Venice Film Festival. Roma is the name of a neighborhood in Mexico City where the events of the film take place without a direct reference to the name of this neighborhood throughout the film, but the film strangely intertwines the neighborhood and streets with its striking narrative. From the outset, we are faced with an anti-story film that appears very slow. The filmmaker has no hurry in introducing his main character (the maid of a house) and the other characters in the film (the landlady and her children). Gradually, we learn that this maid has a crush on a man who loves martial arts and intends to have a romantic date with him; a romantic date that leads to her becoming pregnant. On the other hand, we are confronted with a decaying family from a higher class, and we gradually learn that the man of the family is leaving his children and wife for a new relationship with another woman. The feeling of these characters and identifying with them happens moment by moment in a magical way; without realizing it, we are immersed in an anti-story narrative of their daily lives at a specific moment in history (the 1970s) and have no way to escape from it; these characters will stay with us forever. All the main characters in the film are clearly alone and abandoned. The issue of 'being abandoned' becomes the main issue of the film, and the film follows the victims of this abandonment from a feminist perspective. Both men from two completely different social classes who abandon the two main female characters of the film are somehow connected: one with a polished appearance and the other with violent and inhumane actions; however, the outcome of the behavior of these two men from two different worlds intersects at one point. This intersection is also reflected in the fate of two women from different classes; a fate that beautifully intertwines in scenes and brings them closer together. In fact, the film reconstructs the concept of family: a family that was shattered by the departure of the man is reshaped; this time a female maid takes the place of the man of the family. The concept of family is linked to the issue of children and becomes one of the main features of the film. The maid becomes pregnant, appears lonelier and more helpless than before, and ultimately, in a shocking scene, her baby is born dead. She considers herself guilty (because 'she wanted this baby to be born dead'), and in the most astonishing scene of the film, she saves the two children of the landlady from drowning in the sea; a life she had - in her mind - taken away, she now returns and reaches a celebration of life. This sea scene is the key to Cuarón's technical style: the whole family is at the seaside, and the mother, while leaving, emphasizes that the waves are high and the children should not stray from the shore. The precise process of presenting information in the film has previously reminded us that the maid does not know how to swim. Suddenly, she sees that two of the children are not by the shore and seem to be caught in the waves. The camera follows this frantic woman from a very far distance from the shore and goes with her into the water. Without cutting the shot, the camera accompanies her in the midst of the waves; risking her life to save a life that in the scene of crying - and the subsequent confession about her own child - reveals a kind of guilt of the main character and an effort to cleanse it; a kind of purification. The sea purifies her. Water, as one of the main elements of the film (which begins and ends with it), reminds us of its purifying presence; the same water that cleans the dog's feces in the courtyard (which the man kicked in the scene of leaving this house) and in the end, the water that cleans the courtyard, is clearly a renewed feminine effort to clean this house/neighborhood/country/world from beings whose behavior is linked to the fascism prevailing in the streets, and this maid is actually washing away the footprints of both men - one emotionless who does not even come to see his children and the other who becomes a mercenary for the fascists and a killer in the streets - from the lives of two women who do not need such men. The water on the ground ripples, and we see an airplane passing by again; heading towards a distant place beyond Roma, perhaps towards a future that the filmmaker believes in amidst the darkness of life.