“I feel a little bit like cheating with this thing of accepting this award,” said Mexican auteur Alfonso Cuarón, a little nervously, “because most of what I was doing was just to witness and enjoy the amazing Marina de Tavira and Yalitza Aparicio just exist on the screen.”
It was Cuaróns second time at the podium at the 76th Golden Globes, accepting best director for his acclaimed autobiographical film Roma—a moving, technically accomplished study of a young maids everyday life working for a middle-class family in 1970s Mexico City, the Mexico City of Cuaróns childhood. The movie, which received a non-traditional (for a prestige film, anyway) release on Netflix, won the trophy for best foreign film earlier in the night, solidifying its status as a comfortable front-runner at the upcoming Academy Awards—even though, by the associations rules, it was not eligible for the best-drama prize.
Thanking the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for the director trophy, Cuarón was sure to tip his hat to the streaming platform and increasingly formidable awards juggernaut. “To Netflix,” the director said, “for bringing this very unlikely film into mainstream awareness.”
Its true that the awards hubbub surrounding Roma—which, for its lavishly detailed production and overwhelming sense of scale, is still a quiet, intimately told story—is unlikely for a film of this kind. Usually, at this point in the year, we arent all talking about the best-picture odds of a foreign-language feature—let alone of a film that debuted on Netflix.
But Roma has become something of a limit case to that end. It has the right pedigree—and Cuaróns win tonight proves it. The film, which was also nominated in the screenplay category (where it lost to Green Book) marks Cuaróns second time nabbing the best-director trophy. The first was for the 2013 blockbuster Gravity, for which Cuarón also won the best-director Oscar. Following up tonights win with another Oscar trophy would prove historic: it would be the fifth best-director Oscar for a Mexican director in as many years, on the heels of last years win for Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water) and multiple years of wins for Alejandro Iñárritu (Birdman and The Revenant).
Roma is, like Cuaróns previous work and the work of his peers Iñárritu and del Toro, a nimble mix of technical wizardry and personal passion. Its set in the Colonia Roma neighborhood of Mexico City, from which it draws its title, depicting a brief period in the life of Cleo, housekeeper for a middle-class Mexican family thats undergoing changes of its own after the father, a doctor, leaves the family for another woman. Into that story hop events big and small, political and not, including a surprise pregnancy, the Corpus Christi Massacre of 1971, and a panoply of miniature delights, from the sigh of a Ford Galaxie squeezing itself into the familys tight garage to the stunning image of pregnant women waiting outside of a crowded hospital the night of the massacre.
Cuarón, a technician with soul, has his work cut out for him, however. Roma was ineligible for a best-picture nomination tonight—foreign-language films cannot compete in that category at the Globes, though they can at the Oscars. And so, among others, Cuarón will be up against tonights best-picture-drama winner Green Book. and its director Peter Farrelly (who shared the award for best screenplay tonight with Nick Vallelonga and Brian Hayes Currie), to say nothing of the other formidable nominees: Bradley Cooper for A Star Is Born, Spike Lee for BlacKkKlansman, and Adam McKay for Vice, which did take home a trophy for best actor (Christian Bale).
Big wins for Roma on Oscar night would give legitimacy to Cuaróns brand of epic but intimate storytelling. But theyd also legitimize the efforts of Netflix to break into the prestige game—and of foreign-language filmmakers to break into the best-picture game, a benchmark which, though under-acknowledged, is long overdue.
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