Yalitza Aparicio

In Roma (2018), Cleo Gutiérrez keeps working while the people around her are at home. Yalitza Aparicio makes that distinction felt even when the affection between the housekeeper and the family is clear. She holds our attention without making each look a plea for sympathy, and without needing a confrontation to show that Cleo has feelings of her own. We were moved by the long takes of her household work because Aparicio made us attend to hours the family could take for granted. Her restraint gives us something to watch throughout those stretches.

Alfonso Cuarón gives her the time, though his careful compositions sometimes keep us too far away. Our reservation about the film is that its gratitude towards Cleo can make her seem too agreeable: we want more room for her to be difficult. Aparicio helps by suggesting feelings that the family cannot assume it understands. She does not need an explanatory speech, but the film could afford to regard her with a little less reverence.

Aparicio made her debut in Roma and has since taken selective film and television roles. Luis Mandoki’s horror film Presencias (2022) casts her as Paulina, while the television anthology Mujeres Asesinas (2022) gives her the role of Rocío. The comedy The Great Seduction (2023), in which she plays Ana, takes her into another genre. These credits suggest a willingness to try different kinds of storytelling, though Roma remains the basis of our enthusiasm.

Some have questioned whether Aparicio was acting in Roma, rather than simply playing herself. We find that a poor way of judging a performance that keeps us watching through so much ordinary work. The more useful question is what a director allows her to reveal, and there are moments when Cuarón’s reverence feels limiting. Start with Roma, and pay attention to Aparicio in those unhurried stretches of household work; there is more happening than the family notices.