Santiago. Marina Vidal, a transgender woman, works as a waitress and night club singer. Her older boyfriend, Orlando, presents her with a voyage to surprise her during a dinner. They have sex in the apartment, but later in the night, Orlando wakes up feeling sick. While Marina tries to bring him outside, he falls down the stairs and injures his head. At the hospital, Orlando dies from an aneurysm. His son, Bruno, wants to expel Marina from the apartment; Orlando's ex-wife Sonia wants to forbid Marina from attending the funeral, whereas a police officer is suspicious of Orlando's head injury, trying to put the blame on Marina. Marina holds out, and sings at a night club.
A quiet, gentle, honest and intimate depiction of transgender people and the (passive) discrimination they encounter in the society is the topic of Sebastian Lelio's "A Fantastic Woman", a film that works because it refuses to turn melodramatic or unbearably sappy, whereas a lot of kudos should be given to the main actress, Daniela Vega, who delivers a great, subtle performance as the title heroine who endures all of this with stoic dignity. However, the film suffers from too much "empty walk" and lacks a broader spectrum of a viewing experience: it is directed very straightforward, without ingenuity or innovation, which turns slightly monotone in the second half, whereas the story, it seems, follows the footsteps of those art-films where nothing is resolved in the end, and everything is just left vague. One can sympathize with the heroine, Marina, since the people around her want to isolate and shun her, or humiliate her into simply "going away": one obvious example is the female police Detective who interrogates Marina at her work, where she works as a waitress, constantly implying that her lover was killed, but Marina is called upon a colleague from work because "there is trouble at a table". When the Detective leaves, the colleague admits to Marina she just made up the emergency to save her from further interrogation. In another moment, an examiner orders Marina to take her clothes off, and raise her hand up, to make photos of her, humiliating her. While interesting, this story does not lead to some deeper or more creative paths, and thus its awards are probably more the result of sympathy with the plight of the LGBT community than an actual result of a great cinematic work.
Grade:++
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