Except for the small metal plaque affixed to its facade, 22 Tepeji Street, looks like almost any of the older houses in the old-fashioned part of Mexico City’s Roma neighborhood: painted stucco, a wrought-iron railing on the windows of the front and its flower pots, thin metal slats arranged geometrically over the frosted glass of the garage door.
But the sign commemorates the most celebrated Mexican film in recent decades: Rome, a tapestry of memories woven by director Alfonso Cuarón that envelops the viewer in the dense images and sounds of Mexico City from his childhood.
In the 2018 film, 22 Tepeji represented Cuarón’s childhood home, and its facade and patio appear in some of the most memorable scenes.
And now it’s on sale.
“Life goes on,” said Adriana Monreal, the third of the four generations of the family who lived in this two-story house for more than half a century.
Cuarón spent the first years of his life at the house across the street, 21 Tepeji, but he preferred the light from the house opposite to make his film and the Monreal family agreed. Production designer Eugenio Caballero changed the window bars and remade the patio, which served as the backdrop for the first scene in the film, featuring the film’s protagonist, Cleo, the family’s maid, while she washed dog dirt off the floor with soap and water.
Cuarón and Caballero reproduced the interior of the house together, carefully recreating the details of Cuarón’s memories. In a Netflix documentary about the making of the film, Cuáron describes how he tried to find as much of the original furniture as possible, contacting relatives across Mexico to borrow pieces from them.
The Monreal family received tourists when Rome was nominated for 10 Oscars (he won three, including one for Cuarón for best director) and film fans followed the film’s locations in Rome and the rest of the city.
Monreal’s grandparents moved into the house when his mother, Gloria Silvia Monreal, was a child and raised her together with five brothers and sisters there.
Shortly after Adriana Monreal’s birth, her mother returned home with her parents and raised her only daughter at home. She remembers a house full of people while her aunts and uncles returned for visits. Now she lives there with her mother, husband and two young children.
“It hurts,” Monreal said of the decision to sell the house, preferring to keep the reasons for the sale confidential. “It gave us great satisfaction, we love it. It is not possible to measure everything that we live here, everything that this house has given us: shelter, closeness, close family.
“We love and will always love you.”
Citing rumors that they started flying on social media, Monreal did not share the asking price for the house. The listing for a four-bedroom house on the same street, which is only two blocks long and hasn’t changed much since the 1970s, quoted an initial price of about $ 760,000.
The Monreal family reflects the gypsies that Cuarón portrays in his film, of middle-class families who live in the comfort that Mexico’s stratified society offered, although they were not wealthy.
A few blocks to the north, early 20th century mansions and elegant squares have transformed Rome Norte into a modern global retreat full of trendy boutiques and gourmet restaurants.
But in the section called Roma Sur, just a few blocks from a community garden and the historic primary school where Monreal’s mother studied, the traditional neighborhood endures. It is a place where local shopkeepers still resist the odds, the houses accommodate families of several generations and the night walkers greet each other with a nod.
When the Monreal family leaves, another fine crack in Rome will open.