'Shimmering' Mexican drama 'Roma' wins Venice for Cuaron and Netflix

Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuaron's "Roma" won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, bringing Netflix its first major festival victory to seal the online streaming company's reputation as a big name in arthouse movies.

"Roma", named after the neighborhood in Mexico City where writer-director-cinematographer Cuaron grew up, is a Spanish-language drama that critics almost unanimously described as "shimmering" due to its luscious black-and-white cinematography.

At a festival where only one of the 21 films selected to compete for the Golden Lion was directed by a woman, "Roma" was one of several that focused almost exclusively on female characters, in this case, Cuaron's mother and the two maids who helped bring him up.

Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy called it "an immersive bath in some of the most luxuriantly beautiful black-and-white images you've ever seen" and a huge change from the Sandra Bullock adventure "Gravity" which won Cuaron his Oscar in 2014.

"Roma may not be the memoir film many might have expected from such an adventurous, sometimes raunchy, sci-fi/fantasy-oriented filmmaker, but it's absolutely fresh, confident, surprising and rapturously beautiful."

"The Favourite", another movie with a strong female focus, won the runner-up Grand Jury Prize and its star, Olivia Colman, won the Volpi Cup for best actress for her uproarious portrayal of England's Queen Anne.

Willem Dafoe won the award for best actor for his portrayal of Vincent Van Gogh in the biopic "At Eternity's Gate".

Jennifer Kent, the only female director in the main competition, won the Special Jury Prize for bloody revenge thriller "The Nightingale" whose male lead Baykali Ganambarr won for best up-and-coming actor/actress.