We open on a man named Orlando, getting a massage and wandering around Chile apparently on a mission. He enters a nightclub and his eyes connect with a singer onstage, who returns his gaze. She's notably younger than he, but it's clear the two are in love. That night, they have sex in their high-rise with a breathtaking view -- have sex, I should say, against the wall of windows -- but in the middle of the night, Orlando wakes in pain, suffers an aneurysm, and falls down a staircase.
It's at this point that Marina, the woman, becomes the protagonist, and the film chronicles her journey through grief. She hurries Orlando to the hospital, where he dies, and there she is interrogated and treated like a criminal not because of the bruises on Orlando's body but because she's transgender.
Her story is filled with complex characters and surprising revelations. Some people care for her and want to help her, such as her boss, her friends Wanda and Gaston, and Orlando's brother Gabo. Others help her but are forced by transphobic culture to further alienate her, especially the detective investigating possible sexual assault. And, of course, there are those who insult her with their contempt and loathing, such as Orlando's previous wife and son who try to take back Orlando's apartment and keep Marina away from the funeral.
While the movie is in many ways a hot-topic film, it staunchly refuses to exploit its leading woman and skillfully avoids the pitfalls of, for example, The Danish Girl. What we have here is a hardcore character study of someone who just happens to be trans. THIS is the kind of film that should be praised and studied for its radical importance, far more than the deeply problematic Love, Simon.
Daniela Vega plays Marina without any knowing humor or performative flair -- all the more important because Marina is, in fact, a performer -- which makes this film feel utterly honest. I never once doubted the reality of what I was seeing on screen. Even when the film flies into some mild fantasy, it's grounded and visceral. At one point as she walks down a sidewalk, the wind grows so strong she has to fall against it to stay standing; in a dreamlike nightclub sequence she dances in front of backup dancers before flying up twenty feet in the air to grab the camera lens and stare into the audience.
That informs one of the major takeaways I got from this film. The power of gaze and the complex relationship its objects have to its subject. Marina repeatedly challenges the camera's focus on her even while she earns her title of "A Fantastic Woman." She is mesmerizing as she grieves for love she is repeatedly told wasn't real and that she isn't allowed to mourn. As the film depicts her increasing torment by the hateful members of Orlando's family -- especially in casual bigotry like we saw in Get Out that will hopefully make everyone who "means well" or "just wants to understand" educate themselves, but also in legitimate hate crime encounters -- she is given all she needs to wreak vengeance. She even sees visions of her dead lover, which is often all it takes for a mainstream movie hero to snap.
Not Marina. This movie, with its occasional daydreams and fantasies, is too grounded for that. It's subversive in its simplicity. A woman loses her lover and mourns him, learning who she is again in the face of death. That's it.
Then again, the film repeatedly accuses us of assuming we are entitled to her life. Of course, we do assume that. I'm thinking of a particular moment when Orlando's wretch of a son asks her if she's had surgery on her sexual organs. She responds with a simple "You don't ask that" and -- it's amazing -- the issue never comes up again. The film never tries to show her crotch in one of those Silence of the Lambs scenes of lurid fascination. At one point, near the end, we see her naked on her bed, looking at her crotch; the camera cuts to her perspective, and we see a mirror resting there. Instead of her genitals, we see her face staring back at us, as if to say, "What are you looking for?"
It's a dazzling assault on mainstream entitlement and ignorance.
IMDb: A Fantastic Woman
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