A Fantastic Woman

A fire-breathing female monster with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tale. "A chimera. That's what I'm seeing," one woman says to Marina in A Fantastic Woman (Una mujer fantastica), the Chilean film directed by Sebastian Lelio that won the Best Foreign Language Film at this year's Oscars. It's a rather direct, yet common, way many of the other characters view her, for a variety of reasons. Some, like the brother of her partner, are at least somewhat sympathetic, though not often sticking up for her. (The brother at least calls Marina "ma'am" and, though meekly, reminds others that they should also refer to her using feminine pronouns.) Some treat her like she shouldn't exist, and some are downright violent toward her.

A Fantastic Woman is many things, but it is first and foremost a very good movie, deserving its acclaim. It's fairly captivating without making ostentatious efforts to do so. The film opens with a dazzling opening of the natural scenery of waterfalls, then it shifts to a man in a sauna. This man is Orlando; he's played by Francisco Reyes, who looks like he could be the Chilean Jeremy Irons. Orlando is a 57-year-old divorcee who is in a relationship with a new woman, Marina (Daniela Vega), a waitress and singer. They go out for dinner and dancing in Santiago to celebrate her birthday. They have a lot to drink and smoke a bit of pot. That night, Marina wakes up to find Orlando acting strange; he's short of breath and unsure what is wrong. She rushes to get him to the hospital, but he trips and falls down the stairs on the way.

At the hospital, he dies. The cause: an aneurysm. This isn't a thriller, but Orlando's family members and others start to believe that Marina might have had something to do with it, given the lacerations on his head. Marina is transgender, and Orlando's family is more or less disgusted by her and begin to suspect that there was foul play in his death. (Marina was too drunk to remember exactly what happened.) Whether it's being identified with the masculine pronoun or being forced to undress at the police station, it is apparent that Marina is going to have a lot of heartache and humiliation. One character calls her a perversion, while another asks if she's had "the operation". At one point, she is assaulted.

A feud begins between Marina and Orlando's family members. They want her out of the apartment, they want the car, and to top it all off, they want the dog, which Marina says was given to her by Orlando. Most insulting of all to her, they refuse to allow her to attend the wake or funeral.

Some of the symbolism is subtle, while at times it is laid on a bit much, like the inclusion of the Aretha Franklin song "Natural Woman". But the biggest highlight is Vega's performance. She shows the audience so much, often with little more than her facial expressions. She demonstrates how Marina is shy, vulnerable, and strong. She has agency, for the most part. "I'll survive," she says. Recovering from Orlando's death and struggling to deal with all she has been through since, she escapes to a debaucherous nightclub. In some kind of dream sequence, she leads a minute-long, ethereal dance. Beyond her performance, the mesmerizing, hypnotic, old-fashioned score by Matthew Herbert is really remarkable.

This movie does not feel as if its job is to enlighten everyone on what it is like to be transgender. One will certainly get a sense of the difficulties, and one imagines that Vega channeled her experiences from her youth when she was bullied. I do really hope we'll be seeing a lot more work from Vega, who was listed as one of Time magazine's most influential people this year, and from Lelio.