‘A Fantastic Woman’ an exquisite look at relationships
Watching Chilean director Sebastián Lelio's Oscar-winning film for best foreign language film, "A Fantastic Woman," is an exquisite examination of the expansion and transformation of the grammar of relationships that both questions and redefines conceptions of normalcy.
To give an example, the English translation of the title "Una Mujer Fantastica" is A Fantastic Woman. By moving the adjective from a subordinate position as it is in Spanish to a more dominant position in English, the title is slightly changed. In other words, in Spanish the primary emphasis is on on mujer or woman, as opposed to the adjective fantastica. In so doing, we lose a small glimpse of the most rich meanings of the film: that the lead character is, first, a woman and, second, fantastic.
As the first openly transgender actor to present at the Academy Awards, Daniela Vega is transforming the grammar and space of our world. As the lead character Marina in "A Fantastic Woman," Vega offers a moving portrayal of the often heart-breaking and deeply oppressive day-to-day realities of life as a transgender person. The movie opens with a beautiful sequence of scenes that portray Marina's relationship with Orlando, an older divorced man, played adeptly by Francisco Reyes. The evocative sense of intimacy, sensuality, and sexuality shared by these two was immediate and clear. Any questions raised about their relationship are answered in an easy and passionate portrayal of lovers.
But this idyll cannot last. When Orlando falls ill and quickly dies, Marina's world shifts from one of acceptance and love to a maelstrom of violence and indignity. In a world where trans people and culture are a litmus test of both human and civil rights, Lelio's film shows both the gross and subtle injustices that are heaped upon the trans community for no reason other than their existence. His film shows the ways in which transgender people are expanding the grammar, diction and vocabulary of possibility in identity, relationships, and human interactions. Both fortunately and unfortunately, this expansion also has the effect of becoming the lightning rod for the best and worst of human actions.
Lelio's direction is a minimalist tour-de-force that focuses on Marina's experiences as she weathers the eruptive reactions of Orlando's family in the wake of his death. They are unable to find space in their world for Marina, but her presence whether real or merely felt pervades their actions. They do not know what to do with her as a person. As such, she is subjected to treatment that ranges from dismissive to horrific. Even the occasionally sympathetic responses, are impotent to enact change.
Many scenes in the movie are powerful because they are simple portraits or mini-examinations of Marina while she is alone. We get to know her emotions and understand her reactions to the violence of the world to her identity. Vega's face and body become a moving canvas for Lelio to engage with the tremors of force surrounding identity that the transgender experience evokes. For so many people in the film, she is a question mark, an unknown, or, as Orlando's wife calls her, a chimera.
This intense focus on Marina's world and aloneness makes the scenes where she interacts with Orlando's family all the more emotionally explosive. Her dignity and ability to remain resilient in the face of mistreatment, both vulgar and subtle, is what makes her fantastic. There is no question that Marina is a woman. But what makes her fantastic and more of a superhero than Wonder Woman is that the trials and tribulations she faces are lived realities in the trans community.
She faces these wrongs with a dignity that indicates the grammar of the world is wrong, it simply has not caught up to and accepted what this fantastic, beautiful, and dignified woman offers and is. Watching this film is uplifting because of how Vega soars above any degradation in a song filled with sorrow and joy.
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