The rapid change the movie business is presently
undergoing is such that some believed 2018 might have witnessed the Academy
Awards embracing their first transgender acting nominee. The performer in
question was Daniela Vega, for the Chilean drama A Fantastic Woman (***, 15, 104 mins), and that she eventually missed
out should imply no failure on her part: dodderier Academy voters have always been
more comfortable around Meryl, that’s all. Director Sebastián Lelio has followed up Gloria, his exhilarating 2013 study of
an older woman cutting loose, with a not dissimilar project. Again, he nudges a
marginalised figure into the spotlight, inviting her to shine for a couple of
hours.
For much of that time, ironically, Vega’s Marina
Vidal is struggling to keep from being snuffed out. A waitress and nightclub
singer, her scant security comes under extended threat after her married lover
drops dead from an aneurysm. The deceased’s relatives regard Marina as a nasty
detail to be brushed aside: not just the other woman, but – in the eyes of the
clan’s macho men – fundamentally other. The police, equally, view her with
suspicion from the moment one officer clocks the (male) name on her outdated
ID. Without soapboxing, the film reshapes into a quest for identity – one
woman’s battle to cling onto something of the man she loved, while avoiding
being written out of the picture altogether.
Festival-circuit notices have scented an Almodóvar influence, and certain
images back that up: at one point, Marina is reduced to a standstill on the
street by a sudden gale, just another of the forces raging against her. Yet
Lelio is less inclined towards the melodramatic than he is towards the
sociological. Whether we find ourselves in Marina’s car or her dressing room,
this notably reflective work strives to hold a mirror up to straight society’s apprehensions
around all things trans. When the deceased’s ex tells Marina “When I look at
you, I don’t know what I’m seeing”, it sounds truthful, and harsher than anybody
was expecting.
If the film isn’t quite as arresting as Gloria, perhaps that’s because watching a
heroine trying to hold it together is less dynamic than watching one flying off
the rails. Yet Lelio has overseen at least one quiet representational triumph in
casting trans as trans, and then directing Vega to play frazzled this
comprehensively, and well: in shot almost throughout, she makes a persuasive
case for Marina’s existence and happiness, her right to be whoever she wants to
be. It’s not a film of badges or labels, then, nor one seeking to wave flags or
placards – just a subtly affecting expression of empathy, sent into a world
that could do with a few more of those right now.
A Fantastic Woman opens in selected cinemas from today.
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