Review of A Fantastic Woman (2017) by Clarisesamuels — 16 Sep 2018

Tonight the Hudson Film Society of Quebec did a showing of Una Mujer Fantástica (A Fantastic Woman), which won the 2018 Oscar for Best Foreign Film (Chile). The film is a fascinating portrait of a transgender woman who had a tender, loving relationship with an older man. His death caused her a paroxysm of grief, which she was barely able to indulge, because his passing allowed his alienated family, including ex-wife and adult children, to disavow the unconventional relationship that had embarrassed the family and made them feel disgraced. Marina, a beautiful and elegant young woman who had made the transition from male to female (played by the enigmatic Daniela Vega, a real-life transgender woman), found herself in a nightmare scenario where she was evicted and without rights when the man who had protected and cherished her suddenly died of an aneurysm. In conservative Chile, his sudden death while sharing his bed with a trans woman meant she was subject to questioning from the police as well as a humiliating physical examination that was an outright violation of privacy.

Vega started her transgender transformation in Chile at the age of 17 and was trained to be an opera singer from the age of eight. Director Sebastián Lelio found Vega styling hair in Santiago while he was researching transgender individuals and their experiences. Vega stood out among the others, and Lelio wrote the script based on her complex character and a desire to answer the philosophical question, “What is a woman?” Vega carries the entire film from start to finish, and her expressive eyes and features convey a subtle array of emotions and every conceivable shade of grief, anger, fear, love, forgiveness, and fortitude. Sometimes the subtlety requires patience on the part of the viewer (silences, long pauses, terse remarks). However, it doesn’t matter how the viewer feels about the politics of sex change. By the end of this film, you will perceive only a sensitive, beautiful individual who navigates her way through sorrow and intolerance and is merely a human being, one who is as she says, “of flesh and blood.