Save for the small metal block attached to its front, 22 Tepeji Street, looking like almost any of the old houses in the unfashionable part of Mexico’s Roma City neighborhood: painted stucco, grille wrought iron over the front windows and its flower pots, thin metal slats geometrically covered over the freezing glass of the garage door.
But the plaque marks Mexico’s most famous film in decades: Roma, a tapestry of memorabilia woven by director Alfonso Cuarón that gives the viewer a glimpse into the dense images and sounds of City Mexico in its youth.
In the 2018 film, 22 Tepeji stepped in for Cuarón’s childhood home, and his face and patio appeared in some of the most memorable scenes.
And now it’s for sale.
“Life goes on,” said Adriana Monreal, the third of four generations of the family who have lived in the two-story house for more than half a century.
Cuarón spent the first years of his life in the house across the street, 21 Tepeji, but preferred the light in the house in front of him to shoot his film and the Monreal family agreed. Production designer Eugenio Caballero changed the window grilles and restored the patio, which is like the set piece for the first scene of the film featuring the film’s main character, Cleo , the maid of the family, while she washes dog clothes from the floor with soapy water.
Cuarón and Caballero reproduced the interior of the house on set, carefully recreating the details of Cuarón memories. In a Netflix documentary about making the film, Cuáron describes how he tried to find as much of the original furniture as he could, contacting friends across Mexico to request them to borrow pieces.
The Monreal family welcomed tourists when Roma was nominated for 10 Oscars (it won three, including one for Cuarón as the best director) and film buffs kept an eye on the film’s locations through Roma and the rest of the city.
Monreal’s grandparents moved into the house when her mother, Gloria Silvia Monreal, was a child and raised her with five brothers and sisters there.
Shortly after the birth of Adriana Monreal, her mother moved back home with her parents and raised her only daughter in the house. She remembers a number of people when her sister’s sisters and brothers returned for walks. She now lives there with her mother, her husband and two young children.
“It hurts,” Monreal said of the decision to sell the house, preferring the reasons to keep the sale private. “It made us very happy, we love it so much. You can’t measure everything we’ve lived here, everything this house has given us: shelter, intimacy, a united family.
“We love him and we will always love him.”
Mentioning rumors that have started flying over social media, Monreal would not share the asking price for the house. Listing for a four-bedroom house on the same street, which is only two blocks long and has not changed much since the 1970s, said a asking price of around US $ 760,000.
The Monreal family was present at the Roma portrayed by Cuarón in his film, of middle-class families living in the comfort that Mexico’s stratified society offered even though they were not wealthy.
A few blocks to the north, early 20th century mansions and elegant squares have turned Rome Norte into a global hipster backdrop full of edgy boutiques and gourmet restaurants.
But in the region known as Roma Sur, a few blocks from a community garden and the historic primary school where Monreal’s mother studied, the traditional neighborhood survives. It’s a place where local shopkeepers still hang out against the weirdos, houses accepting multi-generational families and afternoon walkers recognizing each other with a nod.
When the Monreal family leaves, another haircut will open in that Roma.