ROMA

From the opening credits, one senses they are in the knowing hands of a master story teller, film maker and B&W cinematographer. ROMA slowly unveils both the little moments that consume everyday lives, as well as as the larger ones that alter them altogether. It's told around the life of a Mexican domestic servant named Cleo, the kind prevalent throughout Latin/South American countries that speak to issues of class, culture and inequality. Lives that are lived both together, and apart, parallel existences that share more than those on top are willing to acknowledge or admit. It's... complicated.

The film is based on the director Alfonso Cuarón's own youth and family life in Mexico City, and I found myself strongly connected to many of the scenes, while feeling oddly at distance with others (mostly with the rituals of "the haves," as in real life). And he goes about showing how these lives both vary and intersect with some of the most creative and beautiful usage of B&W cinematography, some of which could stand on its own as panoramic stills.

My favorite scene was when the wife and mother of the household returns home drunk and privately reveals to Cleo that no matter what anyone tells her- women are doomed to be alone in the world throughout their lives. Or as John Lennon once said in song, "Woman is the slave of a slave."