A FANTASTIC WOMAN – Review

Daniela Vega stars in A FANTASTIC WOMAN. Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics © All rights reserved.

Chilean director Sebastian Lelio’s A FANTASTIC WOMAN is indeed a fantastic film, with a fantastic performance by its star Daniela Vega, who plays a fantastic woman of dignity and grit facing prejudice because she is transgender, as she copes with the loss of her older lover. A FANTASTIC WOMAN is one of the nominees for the Oscar in the Foreign Language category and the lead contender to win the award.

Marina (Daniela Vega) is a waitress and singer who has just moved in with her older lover Orlando (Francisco Reyes). Marina is graceful, elegant and golden-voiced, and at first she appears to be a pretty young woman like any other. But when Orlando suffers what turns out to be an aneurysm in the middle of the night, her gruff treatment at the hospital reveals that she is transgender. The doctors and medical staff ask pointed questions about her name, refer to her with a masculine pronoun and seem rudely curious about her anatomy. When Orlando’s family show up, they treat Marina like the unwelcome other woman, with a restrained disdain. Marina bears it all with a quiet dignity and poise. Part of the source of their disdain is the difference in ages between Marina and Orlando, part is a difference in social class between her modest background and his wealthy family, but another is the fact that Marina is transgender, and all that implies in Chile.

In his previous film GLORIA, director Sebastian Lelio dealt with the dismissive treatment of a middle-aged woman by paternalistic Chilean society. In this film, he looks at another person marginalized by that same social structure. Marina’s cool treatment by Orlando’s family is one thing, the kind of treatment his ex-wife and grown children might give to any younger lover, but with an extra level of unpleasantness and homophobia. But the intense interest by the police in Marina and her body has unsettling parallels to the Nazis.

The key to why this film works so brilliantly is its star Daniela Vega. Vega is a trans woman and singer who was initially hired by the director as a consultant but ultimately won the starring role. The casting could not be more perfect. Vega’s attractive, slightly androgynous figure and face are combined with a constantly graceful feminine poise and remarkable self-possession. Vega transmits to the camera a moving mix of sadness and quiet dignity as Marina has she faces her pain, dismissive treatment by Orlando’s family and invasive questioning by authorities. Marina is deferential and respectful towards Orlando’s family, but quietly insists on being treated with basic human respect. Vega embodies this restrained yet persistent inner strength, making Marina both a sympathetic figure and an admirable one.

A bonus of casting Vega are a few scenes in which Marina sings, with Vega’s beautiful voice conveying Marina’s inner soul while thrilling audiences with rich, lush tones.

As the story unfolds, both the family and authorities become nastier towards Marina yet she never backs down. In fact, pushes back all the harder in insisting on decent treatment. Lelio mixes the real and the surreal in this film, sometimes presenting Marina’s inner turmoil and her struggle to keep her footing in dream-like sequences. There is one particularly striking scene, where Marina is walking up an ordinary well-kept street lined with attractive shops. As she walks, the street becomes increasingly seedy and the gentle breeze she is walking into becomes a gale, as she struggles to keep her feet.

A FANTASTIC WOMAN is a film well worth the time seek out and watch, for its wonderful lead performance and its portrayal of quiet human dignity and persistence in the face of prejudice. A FANTASTIC WOMAN, in Spanish with English subtitles, opens in St. Louis on Friday, February 23, at Landmark’s Tivoli Theater.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars