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Alfonso Cuarón is one of my favorite directors. He made the best Harry Potter films, The Prisoner of Azkaban; the fantastic and memorable Children of Men, which is, at least on one level, a retelling of the Christmas story, and the thrilling, head-spinning Gravity. These movies are so different from each other, it's basically impossible to pin down a signature style or trademark. Cuarón just makes great films, plain and simple.

Roma, a domestic drama about a middle-class Mexican family in the 1970s, is a return to Cuarón's roots. The heart of Roma (named after a barrio in Mexico City) is Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a young woman who works as a housekeeper. Aparicio is Miztec on her father's side and Triqui on her mother's.

I used to visit the Triqui people in Mexico, years ago, along the Baja peninsula as they lived in cardboard villages and picked tomatoes and strawberries for a giant American agricultural company. It was a surreal and satisfying experience to see a similar face to my old friends cast in shimmering black and white on the movie screen. Aparicio is, to my knowledge, the first Native American actor ever nominated for an Academy award.

The family Cleo works for consists of a mother, Sophia (Marina de Tavira), an unnamed father (Fernando Grediaga) and four young children-I think we're supposed to understand that one of the children is Cuarón himself. The film is primarily told through Cleo's eyes, and she is both an outsider to the family (she speaks Spanish as they do, but often reverts to her Native language with the cook or her friends) and that invisible, silent center who sees and knows all that is happening to the family.

The father of the family leaves on a business trip, which gets extended and extended until Sophia realizes he is never coming back. Then Cleo discovers she's pregnant. She tells the father of her unborn child this news while at the movies. He excuses himself to use the bathroom and walks right out the door, never to return. It's obviously an echo of Sophia's husband's behavior, but Cleo does not have the resources her employer has to survive. For Sophia, the silver lining of her husband's abandonment is her own self-actualization; she realizes she is stronger than she ever knew. But then we see that this kind of story is wrapped in privilege; Cleo does not get a silver lining. For her, life simply goes on, marked by tragedy and emergency, but otherwise surprisingly monotonous, day to day.

Roma captures the spirit of "magical realism" without ever hinting at the supernatural. Cuarón deftly sprinkles the magical into this earthy, honest portrait of humans living and relating to each other, in beautiful and broken ways.

In Juanita, Alfre Woodard plays a woman who is at a dead end in her life. She's been working the same job for way too long, with no chance at promotion or career advancement. Her kids are making questionable choices, and she's pretty sick of picking up the pieces. Even her recurring sexual fantasy involving Blair Underwood has gotten stale. So, she buys a bus ticket for Butte, Montana, just because she needs to get out of there before she goes crazy.

Based on a novel titled Dancing on the Edge of the Roof, by Sheila Williams, Juanita is not terribly original or exciting. She goes on the road trip, she meets some interesting people, she calms down, gets some perspective and her problems start to figure themselves out. It has the feel of a TV movie; there's not much to speak of in terms of cinematography or direction, and it's competently produced, but looks like there was probably a tight budget. In this streaming age, are made-for-TV movies still a thing? I guess made-for-streaming is the equivalent.

What makes Juanita marginally more interesting, and certainly more enjoyable for me, is that Juanita finds herself, at the end of the bus line, on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. She stumbles into a cafe run by Adam Beach and ends up as the cafe's cook. The film's representation of life in a Native community felt simple and down to earth. Beach takes her to a pow wow, and a medicine man prays for her, but it never feels romanticized or exotic. It's hard to find films with positive or realistic depictions of modern Native people, and I appreciated that this felt like an organic part of Juanita's story.

This movie probably won't win any awards or get talked about much. But it has its simple charms, and I can recommend it for comfortable, non-challenging viewing after a long and busy day. It's not a bad movie to fall asleep to.

Roma

2018

Drama

2 hr. 15 min.

Rated R for graphic nudity, some disturbing images, and language.

Juanita

Drama

2017

1 hr. 30 min

TV-MA

Will Krishchke and his wife work with InterVarsity in Durango, Colorado, where his wife directs Native Ministries for InterVarsity.