After a couple of grandiose, English-language sci-fi projects and a short-lived U.S. TV series (with multiple hiatuses inbetween), Alfonso Cuarón has finally returned to filmmaking in his native country and language for the personal, semi-autobiographical drama, Roma. A far cry from the high-concept thrills of Children of Men and Gravity (films heralded for their innovative action sequences and complex effects and camerawork), Roma appears as a far more modest affair — no lives or the fate of the world at stake, just the character’s happiness.

Roma follows a couple of years in the life of Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio, excellent and soulful in her first and only acting role), a native South American woman and a hard-working housekeeper for a rich Mexican family, headed up by a doctor and a teacher. Based on events from Cuarón’s childhood, the whole film feels like an intensely personal affair. It’s cinematic reverie in the vein of Terence Davies’ The Long Day Closes or Distant Voices, Still Lives, each scene tinged with the nostalgia and melancholy of memory. It’s so packed with detail and feels so lived in that it feels like it only could have come from experience, as shown through not only the family, but the lives of people around them in 1970s Mexico City.

Cleo is often left to act as a surrogate mother to the children in the absence of their parents, so much that she may as well be. In other words, she has to deal with a lot of shit, often literally, and clearly has the patience of a saint — wrangling several children with a compulsion towards screaming, fighting and doing the exact opposite of whatever any adult asks them to do. On top of all this, two events occur that destabilise Cleo’s life; a fracture in the family she works for, and an unexpected pregnancy. She quietly shoulders both, the weight of each issue bearing down on her until it’s impossible to bear.

Roma is filmed in gorgeous, high contrast black and white — a stripped back aesthetic compared to Cuarón’s usual work, but no less emotive. There’s an abundance of beautiful panning camera movements, many of which linger in each space even once the subject has left the frame. For example, the camera pans around in a 360-degree arc in shots of Cleo cleaning a room, and continues panning after she has left. It’s the most emotive use of Cuarón’s signature long takes, keenly observing the characters, environments and how people leave their mark, rather than for the sake of virtuoso filmmaking itself. It looks so good that one can only wait with baited breath to see how Netflix handles the film’s release; with rich sound design and such tactility in its visuals, it would be a shame for this to be mostly confined to the smaller screen.