i admit there were a lot of parts where i felt bored. i wish i could better appreciate the quiet and the mundane (ordinary daily slow) but, my heart and mind are restless (perhaps more so than before? i think i used to value the quietness in film more). i hope for the day when i can see the beauty in the smallest, emptiest things. it seems they have the potential to be the most full. 

what this movie was to me... it was about strength. how strong women are and can be, how they bear pain and tiredness and unfairness and still love despite of it. i think what makes this story so powerful is that it doesn't have a "point" to make. it presents the lives of cleo and sofia truly and honestly, and makes no comment or judgment, apart from to say, here are women trying their best. i've seen some reviews commenting on how the class/race dynamic should have been explored more, or how the audience shouldn't celebrate cleo's selflessness because she was being taken advantage of, but i don't think that's what this movie was about. through watching the film, you /know/ that despite the overwhelming love there is still an underlying power imbalance between cleo and the family she works for. but i don't think roma is meant to be a critique on society, or was made to deliver a message of any sort. it's not even about praising female camaraderie - after all, as sofia said, "we women are always alone". 

roma is about the individual. about the simultaneous smallness and greatness coexisting in a single person's being. all it does, is take the time to recognise and understand and SEE, truly see, cleo's life, and sofia's life, and through them the lives of all the women like them - this is where roma's beauty lies. just seeing, and feeling, and knowing. here is the mundanity, here is the pain, here is the joy, here is the unfairness, here is the cruelty and confusion and sadness, here is the love. and through it all, the strength that tide these women through. 

the cinematography was beautiful and gentle and the last few holiday scenes were especially moving. yalitza asparicio is incredible. i smiled and cried and felt sleepy/bored and cried and smiled.