In the early '60s, a Mexican director was born, his thirst for creation brought him to make films that reshape cinema's landscape. Children of Men, Solo con Tu Pareja, Gravity, Y Tu Mama Tambien, and Harry Potter Prisoner of Azkaban are among his most important films, this is Alfonzo Cuaron.

Roma is his most intimate and personal film ever. Directors have always searched on one point of their career making a movie about a personal story. Oliver Stone with Platoon, Richard Linklater with Before Sunshine, David O. Russell with Silver Linings Playbook and even Steven Spielberg with Schindlers List.

Roma tells the story of Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) a maid who works for a family in the colony(neighborhood) of Roma in Mexico City during the '70s. She takes care of four kids from Sofia (Marina de Tavira) and Antonio(Fernando Grediaga), she also takes care of Teresa, which is Sofia's mom. Cleo also does cleaning and make sure the house runs smoothly, with the help from Adela.

The relationship between Sofia and Antonio is in crisis and they are trying to hide it from the kids, but there is a breaking point when Antioni leaves for Quebec for some research never returning home. At the same time, Cleo gets pregnant from a playful relationship with a guy name Fermin. The story continues in the brink of very dangerous times in Mexico with the rise of students protest and a paramilitary group name Los Halcones.

Rome is a very interesting exploration of life in the '70s thru the eyes of a maid and a middle-class family in Mexico City. Cuaron shows this life connecting with people who lived in the '70s and '80s in Latin America, a time a remember pretty well.

However, Cuaron's devotion to telling such a personal story gets some audience lost because there is not enough cultural context to understand what's happening, is just a glimpse of events. Personally, I had to research some of the political happenings in Mexico to understand. The film serves as collection vignettes of a different life in this city. The naturalism of just using sound and not having a music score creates a slow pace to the movie which can be deceiving for audiences.

Roma is a beautifully shot film with too many hidden VFX that makes me wonder, how you can tell a personal story about your past and you need to alter the reality of the story?. The film contains very interesting metaphors about relationships from a big car to a small car and also how dog's poop becomes an object for couple's argument, Cuaron borrows the visual style of Orson Wells, Hitchcock, and Tarkovsky just to make a point of a film that looks good black and white

What's struck me about watching Roma on Netflix's streaming platform instead of in theaters, is about previous well-reviewed foreign films and how they become forgotten after winning the Academy Award, Roma is now a trendy movie with audiences hating it and critics loving it, just like last year Will's Smith Netflix film Bright, was hated by the critics and love it by audiences.

Roma could be forgotten if it wasn't shown on Netflix.