A FANTASTIC WOMAN
(M, 104 mins) Directed by Sebastián Lelio
In present day Santiago, a young trans woman goes home with her older boyfriend. An hour later, he is dead, and she – Marina – is unwillingly thrust into a series of intrusive, unsettling and occasionally frightening meetings and negotiations with the deceased Orlando’s family, the police and her own sister and brother-in-law.
A Fantastic Woman rests on the shoulders of Daniela Vega’s performance as Marina. Vega smoulders, seethes, and occasionally implodes. It’s a piece of work of astonishing, internalised power.
Writer/director Sebastian Lelio (Gloria) prefers to let his performers improvise their way through a scene, and in Vega he has found his perfect muse. Marina’s journey is laid out in a series of deftly constructed and beautifully realised moments, all of them interlocking seamlessly with what has gone before. But Marina remains an often wordless, watchful presence within her own story.
Of course, A Fantastic Woman is a film about transphobia. But it is also a story with universal resonance. It’s about the fight to be allowed to be and to define ourselves. It is often funny, occasionally confrontational, and always gratifyingly provocative and challenging.
Even as the story flirts with magic realism and a very light dusting of the supernatural (or at least, well integrated dream sequences) the film remains grounded, gritty and entirely believable. A Fantastic Woman deals its tricks so deftly we barely notice them being played.
Lelio lays out Marina’s story, mostly, in a series of interiors. We move from a restaurant, to an apartment, to a hospital and beyond. Every interaction takes place against a backdrop – a mural, a photograph, a graffitied ruin – that provides some comment and context for what is happening. Every choice Lelio makes is clearly deliberate and informed, but the style and design of A Fantastic Woman never feels contrived or intrusive.
Visually, this film packs no bombast or fireworks, but it is still one of the most impressive and sustained acts of beauty I have seen committed to a cinema screen in months. Comparisons to Moonlight and The Florida Project would be valid.
Maybe in its final moments, A Fantastic Woman leaves a few questions hanging which I would like the film to have answered. But I’m also prepared to believe that’s just me being a cloth-eared numpty who should learn how to hear more clearly what’s actually being said in the spaces between the words.
A Fantastic Woman is a lyrical, tough-minded and heartfelt film.
Ultimately it is about bravery. And about love, which is surely the greatest act of everyday bravery there is.