Revisión de “jódete” (FU) – Roma

The year before Parasite, everyone was up in arms about how Green Book won Best Picture and that it was a national disgrace and racism was returning to Hollywood and so on and so forth. One of the frequent names brought up for deserving Best Picture winners was Roma, a Mexican film which won the Oscars for Director, Cinematography and Foreign Language Film, and which everyone seemed to love and cherish like the Second Coming. Well, guess what? I fuckin’ hate this movie!

It is also a monument to indulgence, over-artistry, boredom, superficiality, etc.

Roma is one of the most disappointing films I’ve ever seen in my life. It was from one of my favourite directors (Alfonso Cuarón), the trailer looked excellent, the premise sounded like a haven of drama and intrigue, and I heard so many good things about it. Then I watched it. And shrivelled inside.

I can only really identify one thing about Roma that I like, and that’s Yalitza Aparicio, the film’s lead actress making her feature-length debut. She acts with a very natural grace instead of the normal pompous speeches and indulgences, and she felt like a real person I could meet on the street and have a nice conversation with. Everyone else felt one-note, but Aparicio was gold. Anyway, back to the fire and fury.

Yalitza Aparicio, sitting in a car, acting her heart out, to little avail.

I hate almost everything else about Roma. I hate how it’s shot, I hate how it’s directed, I hate how some scenes clearly demonstrate an understanding of proper filmmaking skill while others don’t, I hate its pacing, I hate the goddamn opening credits! I mean, how can you make a boring credits sequence in a prestige movie? Shoot for three unbroken minutes in almost complete silence at a floor with water flowing over it, that’s how.

The main thing that I have a problem within Roma is that it barely feels like anything is happening. Everything the film shoots is just some mundane stuff that’s boring to watch. Whether it be cleaning, or going to a cinema, or doing martial arts, or whatever, Roma somehow makes it boring due to a lack of any sort of tension, music or grit. Hell, this movie even makes a massive riot with hundreds of extras seem boring, because it’s shot like it’s behind a museum case and the people within are just dolls. There’s no urgency or meaning to anything in this movie.

And the cinematography, oh my god, how can this movie make me hate black-and-white cinematography? How?!

How?!?!

Simple. Shoot everything with the slowest camera movements and shoot as though just nothing is happening, like a security camera. This movie is unable to make me feel anything for what is happening because the film is shot in a way that suggests nothing is really happening, like a camera in a Paranormal Activity movie. And Alfonso Cuarón knows how to make you feel involved as a director. Just look at Children of Men, probably one of the greatest films ever made, or his excellent sci-fi film Gravity, and in those the camera shakes, it moves, it glides roughly as though you are actually walking through this war zone/orbit. But Cuarón forgot all that and shot this movie like a supermarket’s security camera.

The choice to release this movie on Netflix only is inexplicable. I can see in some scenes that Cuarón is trying to go for the majesty and epic scale that you can only really experience on a cinema screen, so why force me to only see these things while having to squint at my laptop/TV? And even worse, Netflix is awful at subtitles (they didn’t even put any subtitles for the aliens on District 9, even though it’s a fifth of the total dialogue), so some scenes play out with no understanding of what the hell is going on (I had to google one scene to find out that someone was singing Happy New Year in Norwegian, as though that would be my immediate conclusion while watching the film). If I saw this in cinemas, I would have been briefly awe-inspired enough by the night-time scenes, which actually use light brilliantly and is the only time this films cinematography works, to maybe like this movie. But what the hell?

And also, there are poop jokes in this movie.

Yep.

Not in a good Persepolis/The Lighthouse sh*t joke good, where it's supposed to be a sign of innocence or a sign of vulgarity in these characters. More of a DreamWorks phoned-in poop joke.

In short? F^ck this movie. Alfonso Cuaron, you’re so much better than this. Even if Green Book didn’t deserve Best Picture, then give it to BlacKkKlansman, or First Man, or Into the Spider-Verse, or anything else beyond this slog.

Anyway, what foreign language films did you love like a ménage a trois, or think was just ló fasz? Leave your answer in the comments below.