Still, Cleo (the protagonist loosely modelled on Libo), not a fragmented version seen through the eyes of others, is who we’re following through these many spaces — some of which she can inhabit, and others where she can’t quite fit. Within the family home, Cleo retreats in the background. This is their space, and though she participates in family activities, she never forgets that she’s not one of them. In one striking scene, the family is together watching TV on the couch as Cleo sits on a pillow on the floor with one of the children. They’re a unit — until Sofia tells Cleo to get Antonio some tea, and she rises to perform that task, leaving the others to their entertainment. As fellow film critic Monica Castillo astutely points out , it’s a moment that feels “almost as if Cuarón were revisiting these memories and realising how [Libo] must have felt to be treated that way by his mother.”