A FANTASTIC WOMAN
(Una Mujer Fantástica) B
Chile Germany
Spain USA (104 mi)
2017 ‘Scope d:
Sebastián Lelio
An overly
melodramatic look at the effects of machismo culture in South America,
particularly in their open hostility towards the gay, lesbian, and transgender
community. Centered by a brilliant
performance by transgender Chilean actress Daniela Vega as Marina Vidal, the
film has a way of forcing the audience to experience the world through her eyes,
becoming a near Christ-like journey of enduring the violence and humiliation
from others without striking back, showing extraordinary restraint, allowing a
trans actress to play a trans character onscreen, all of which only elevate the
dignity of her persona. While not in the
same league as Xavier Dolan’s 2013
Top Ten List #2 Laurence Anyways or Fassbinder’s mother of all transgender
films, In
a Year of 13 Moons (In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden... (1978), where male
actors play the roles of transgendered characters, this film is closer to
Almodóvar’s trans actresses, particularly Antonia San Juan in ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER
(1999) and Bibiana Fernández in Matador
(1986) and Law
of Desire (La ley del deseo) (1987), where outstanding performances
generate most of the sparks onscreen.
Ironically, last year Chile’s Ministry of Education introduced measures
to punish schools that didn’t allow trans kids to use bathrooms that
corresponded with their gender identity, just one month after the Trump
administration revoked those same protections in the United States. A follow-up to his wildly overpraised
middle-age exposé, Gloria
(2013), both films are set in Santiago, Chile. While the referenced title is never mentioned
or spoken in the film, where viewers are allowed to speculate afterwards on the
central performance, what is utterly fantastic are introductory images of Iguazu
Falls, literally immersing the audience directly into the heart of the
falls, an apt metaphor for what transpires, as it may as well be the heart of
Marina Vidal leading into the opening credit sequence. Marina is celebrating her birthday at a
Chinese restaurant with a much older aristocratic lover (by 30 years), Orlando
Onetto (Francisco Reyes), a textile company executive seen earlier looking on
admiringly, even mouthing the words at Marina singing a sultry salsa number at
an upscale nightclub, periodico
de ayer-hector lavoe y willie colon - YouTube (6:47). As she blows out the candles on a birthday
cake, he offers a trip for two to Iguazu Falls, which they plan to visit
together in ten days, while the night is rhapsodized with kisses on the dance
floor, turning into a multi-colored spectrum of intimacy and romance before
retreating into the bedroom of his nearby apartment overlooking the city.
Whatever may feel
like an anticipated love story, that’s the last opportunity to experience those
fleeting feelings of romance in the air, as the film turns on a dime when
Orlando feels ill but disoriented, unable to explain what’s wrong, losing his
equilibrium, actually falling down the stairs before Marina can get him to the
emergency room where he dies from an aneurysm.
The attending physician presumes foul play and immediately suspects Marina,
pulling her off to the side, with Marina growing equally suspicious, wondering
why the third degree, eventually exiting the premises in fear and disgust. By the next morning, however, she’s up and
off to work, waiting on tables at a busy restaurant, where she’s constantly
interrupted by rude customers needing something and her boss reminding her she
has a visitor, who turns out to be an investigative police officer from the Sex
Crimes unit. What any of this has to do
with Orlando’s death is simply the way society views transgenders, as if they
are deviants and criminals, making them the initial suspects in any potential
crime. Nothing points to a crime other
than these unfounded suspicions that run rampant throughout the police
department, and apparently attending physicians in hospitals as well. Having initially seen Marina and Orlando
together wrapped in each other’s arms, viewers have no doubts, but this is a
view shielded from the rest of society, where they are instead viewed as
outcasts, so they have no reason to share their stories with mainstream
society, where they are routinely and often crudely ridiculed and
rejected. So the film taps into and
plays with reflected mirror images, one that exists for the participants
themselves, seen only by them, and another view from the outside that reeks of
hostility and prejudice, filled with notions of deviant criminal behavior. This mirror imagery is used to a meticulous
extent in Fassbinder’s Chinese
Roulette (Chinesisches Roulette) (1976), literally bombarding viewers with
visually reflective images, suggesting shifting psychological viewpoints, but
Lelio has another motive, to play society’s bigoted views back upon itself,
where the demeaning remarks aimed at Marina are more appropriately meant for
the accusers, as whatever Marina may be, she is not aggressively violent or
malevolent, and harbors no ill will towards anyone. So when outlandishly offensive comments are
spoken to humiliate and degrade her, they more accurately reflect back on the
one making the hostile accusations. One
of the first rude awakenings comes when Marina is awakened one morning in her
own shared apartment with Orlando by one of Orlando’s sons, Nicolás Saavedra as
Bruno, who crudely depicts his views of Marina with growing hostility,
wondering what his father ever saw in her, that their lives as a family unit
were fine until she entered the picture, viewing her as filth, ordering her out
of the apartment as quickly as possible.
Orlando has a
brother Gabo, Luis Gnecco from Pablo Larraín’s Neruda
(2016), (with Larraín and 2017 Top
Ten List #2 Toni Erdmann director Maren Ade listed among the film’s
producers), who is perfectly accepting of Marina, knowing how much she meant to
his brother, but he is an anomaly, as no one else from his family shares his
views. Orlando’s corrosive ex-wife,
Aline Küppenheim as Sonia, openly despises her and likely called in the cops in
the first place, immediately arranging for the return of her husband’s car
before telling her she can’t even describe what she sees in front of her,
disdainfully calling her a “chimera,” a fire-breathing female monster with a
lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail in Greek mythology, before
making sure she understands she’s prohibited from attending the wake and
funeral services. Tellingly, on the way
to this meeting, Marina was playing Aretha Franklin on the car radio, Aretha Franklin - (You Make
Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman [1967 ... YouTube (2:50), a song that
epitomizes music of the heart and soul.
Meanwhile she’s confronted once again by the Sex Crimes detective,
ordering an invasive full-body examination, including nude photographs by a
male police photographer, supposedly to reveal no wounds, a humiliating ordeal
designed to make her feel exactly as they view her, as if she’s subhuman. Nothing, however, is as low as a return visit
by Bruno, who literally kidnaps her off the street, pulling her into his van,
calling “her” an animal as they rough her up, insult and demean her in every way possible before
dropping her off in an anonymous alleyway next to a garbage container. The continual barrage of her debase
harassment is really what’s wrong with this picture, as it was with Dee Rees in
Mudbound
(2017), for instance, as these directors feel the need to fill the screen with
highlighted imagery of hatred and bigotry, to rub the audience’s noses in it,
showing the wretchedness of the human condition, as if viewers aren’t
sophisticated enough to deal with subtler renderings that contain the same
powerfully dramatic message, where Bresson’s poetically understated film Au
Hasard Balthazar (1966) comes to mind.
The demeaning melodramatic fireworks actually detract from the film’s
most powerful weapon, which is the immaculately placid expression on the face
of Daniela Vega, offering one of the most powerful performances of the year, as
she is overwhelmingly sympathetic throughout, always above the fray, making her
thoughts and feelings imminently clear, becoming the heart and soul of the
picture, who stands a good chance of becoming the first transgender actress
nominated for an Academy Award (never happened, but she is the first openly
transgender presenter at the Academy Awards).
The power of her artistry has elevated this film above and beyond
expectations, as the film itself is rather conventional. Without her there wouldn’t be much to talk
about. While fending off the goons, she
retraces various stages of her life, revisiting friends from a noticeable
lower-class background, attempting to navigate the extraordinary upheaval that
has taken place, losing the love of one’s life in an instant, where all the
possibilities of what might have happened ominously disappear, leaving an
emotional void that she has to fill.
With recurring ghostly visions of Orlando, her choices get more and more
interesting, slowly returning to who she is, at core, regaining her equilibrium
in a dreamlike visit to the bowels of a crematorium, spending a few cherished
final moments, capturing yet another side of herself, much of it existing in
her own imagination, showing a resilience of the spirit that is beautifully and
fantastically rendered in a splashy fantasia sequence, a bravura moment before
the haunting finale, using an 18th century Handel aria that was originally
composed to be sung by a male soprano castrato, a song of exceptional tenderness
and care (finally allowed to appropriately grieve), sung of course by Daniela
Vega herself, Daniela
Vega - "Ombra Mai Fu" (A Fantastic Woman OST) - YouTube (2:52),
who is a trained opera singer since the age of 8.
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