So this is Alfonso Cuarón’s semi-autobiographical story about growing up as an affluent kid in Mexico City in the ’70s, but it’s told from the perspective of the family’s maid (to whom it’s also dedicated).

I think the best way to sum it up is to say that it feels like a memory about his childhood. There are vivid details; there are important historical events that impinge on the family’s activities; but it’s also kinda seen through a child’s eyes.

Not entirely; he does have a good grasp of the parents and their conflicts, and you can believe them as real people. But the maid is… the kind of quasi-parental figure to whom you dedicate a movie, not a fully realized character. She’s endlessly patient, stoic in the face of any adversity, and unfailingly kind.

But like… shit happens to her, you know? Was she never angry, or even irritated, about it? Did she never gossip with her friends about her asshole boyfriend? Is it really possible that she never in any circumstance showed any emotions other than those you might show to a small child whom you were fond of but also had to be nice to because you’d be fired if you weren’t? Either from an excess of affection or an insufficiency of introspection, Cuarón has memorialized her as a saint, not a human being.

It’s a good movie. It’s gorgeously filmed, in creamy digital black and white. It evokes a clear sense of place and time. The dramatic incidents in it are gripping and tense and surprising. But the character at the heart of the movie is just too much a cipher for it to be truly great.

Still worth a watch, if you have Netflix and are looking for a movie, though.