I was transfixed by his flying penis. It kinda pisses me off. I don't think women react the same way to seeing other nude women like men react to full on unit exposure.
I have no way of objectively knowing that, but I agree that this statement is 100% true.
Then it occurred to me, that his staff, was his weapon.
Alfonso Cuarón missed a perfect opportunity for foreshadowing their military involvement by not making that reference when they were having their training.
Then at the end of the film as Cleo climbs the stairs we see the plane again. Damn you Roma plane that I can't understand, damn you to hell.
From the IMDB trivia:
"Alfonso Cuarón decided to shoot on location in Mexico City instead of using a soundstage. This is one reason for the several appearances of airplanes, because according to Cuarón they had a plane passing by every five minutes."
As someone who lives right under an aeroplane-route, I sympathize.
I felt there was also the repeated idea of birth and rebirth, or birth and death. A few examples follow.
1. When they were at the party celebrating New Year's eve, it was the birth of a new year, and the death was the forest catching on fire.
2. When Cleo was shopping for a crib it was for the birth of her baby, the death in that scene was a shooting victim.
3. The dog heads on the wall even implies that once one dies, you get another.
4. When the mom takes the kids and Cleo to the beach she confesses in the restaurant that "dad isn't coming back home", which is the death of their marriage/family, then Cleo saves the kids from drowning in the ocean and herself becomes a part of the extended family. So we get a dual birth/death here because its the death of the marriage, but the birth of the new family unit, including Cleo, but also Cleo confesses she didn't want the baby, which died, just after saving the kids from drowning to give them another chance at life. During this particular sequence we also get a very awesome shot of the kids sadly eating ice-cream after they found out their parents are being divorced while in the background of the scene a wedding is taking place. Fuck, wish I could find a pic of that.
5. Lastly, I think there is also some birth/rebirth, birth/death messages to do with the political climate of the time but I don't know what was going on in Mexico in the 1970's well enough to point it out. Obviously, one such example was the protestors (a new beginning or change) and the ones paid to kill them.
Except for the Divorce/Wedding scene, this completely flew over my head. Well done MusterX
It's definitely not a good sign when the only redeeming quality of an artsy-fartsy movie that takes itself super cereal is the unintentional hilarity of a scene where a guy does the 1970s Mexican version of "I train UFC" and proceeds to show his Napoleon Dynamite "great skills" bare ass naked.
I hope that in 40 years someone will make a movie about our time and have a hilarious "get in my guard, bro" segment
is the unintentional hilarity of a scene .
Unintentional?
The hilarity of that scene seemed pretty intentional to me.
The dude's nakid!
I think you're being generous here. That mom was a bitch who treated Cleo like shit and who took out her own frustrations and weaknesses on those around her, from chewing Cleo out to slapping her son. She wasn't aiming for anything in that moment, and she sure as fuck wasn't aiming for feminine solidarity with Cleo. She was just downloading more of her shit on whoever happened to be there, and it happened to be Cleo.
To reiterate my position, I'm just saying that she was "aiming" for solidarity. Not that she actually succeeded or that said spur came from a worthwhile place. The fact that mom says "us women" gives the impression that Sofia wants to be inclusive with Cleo at this moment. The problem is just that Sofia does it in such a tone-deaf, blind, egotistical and drunken manner that it utterly fails to be a moment of solidarity and just becomes another instance of -- as you say -- Sofia unloading her shit onto Cleo. The ego-intention is solidarity but the function is shit.
If I'm understanding the charge correctly, then I'd say that it's misguided. He wasn't commenting on anything, so there's nothing that he missed or was unaware of in so commenting...because there was no comment. As my post indicates, that's a charge that's perhaps debatable but at least valid on its face (and I obviously think that it's 100% valid and a legitimate complaint to be leveled at the dull and pointless film). To say that there was a lack of self-awareness in the film, though, would seem to be an indicator of a political bias, i.e. because he didn't offer a commentary on subjugation/privilege/insert buzzword he's therefore unaware; it couldn't possibly be that he had different interests/intentions in making the film...
What sort of definition of "commenting" are you using?
To me, it seemed pretty obvious that the comment of the film was about the dynamic of how maids where handled in 70's Mexico. The casual neglect, the blindness of privilege, the helplessness of their position in regard to a crisis, and the fact that emotional bonds still developed between maids/families.
Mom didn’t know that Cloe was just about to take the kid away when she opened the door. Instead it maybe looked like they were both eavesdropping.
There are numerous instances of them blaming Cleo for something unjustly or them just being blind/uncaring to Cleo's needs (dog-shit, eavesdropping, not wanting to be her doctor, not giving her support after her stillborn baby). The eavesdropping scene doesn't happen in a vacuum. I think this is there to communicate that due to Cleo's low position in the hierarchy, she's often thoughtlessly blamed for stuff by more powerful members of the family. Especially in emotional situations.
It seemed awkward at first, but turned out to be the right call to keep her occupied and getting her to open up. She was closer to the family than to her room mate.
She got to "open up" because she and the children had just gone through the trauma of a near-death experience. If there needs to be a near-death experience to open up or receive affection from the family, then that indicates a pretty fucked-up situation.
Thinking about it, I kind of hate that about this movie. Cleo's climactic rapprochement with the family is due to a completely accidental situation where she saves their lives. She suffers, and suffers, and suffers -- while the family learns nothing systematic about the predicament of her situation, and then because of a complete accident that has nothing to do with the family coming to know or understand her as a person, they learn to love her (while still not knowing her).
If your major turning point can be boiled down to something completely accidental, then that speaks badly about it. Maybe that was the point Alfonso wanted to make, they learn nothing but still love her. But if that was the message he wanted to send, then he should have made their love much more bittersweet and problematic -- instead of the happy-looking ending that we get. Because, again, this indicates a pretty fucked-up situation.
As I mentioned, this seems like the good suffering little Christian archetype from Victorian fiction who gets a redemption because of her suffering without actually changing anything systemic about the situation.
God, talking about this movie makes me want to kick a chair or something
. I hope
@BeardotheWeirdo is going to be as angry as I am over all of this.
And I said that
@europe1 was being too generous. You're seeing that character through the rosiest rose-colored glasses IMO.
How harshly she deserves to be criticized, I'm fine with debating that (after all, her marriage
is falling apart), but
that she deserves to be criticized doesn't seem worth debating given how obvious it is that she was often petty and petulant. I noticed in the very beginning when the family's sitting around the TV and the kid puts his arm around Cloe and
that's the moment the mom tells her to go make tea for the dad. Couldn't have waited a couple of minutes? Or maybe at a commercial? And not even just for Cloe's sake, but for your kids' sake? No, I want to tell you what to do, so do what I tell you right now.
Both of the parents were weak and shitty people, but, specifically regarding Cloe, the dad seemed like the type who wanted everything taken care of
so he didn't have to bring it up (like the dog shit conversation) whereas the mom seemed like the type who wanted to have shit to bring up
so she could tell someone what to do. Her marriage (and, by extension, her life) was unraveling and she couldn't control the tailspin, but she could at least play Queen of the House and keep the servants in line
