A lover left behind fights for her right to mourn
When the Chilean force of nature known as Daniela Vega barrels down a hallway, or stares down a dismissive, callous or uncomprehending obstacle, it’s a fierce sight to see.
Vega, a trans Chilean performer trained in the theater and also known as a vocalist in her native Santiago, plays the leading role in “A Fantastic Woman.” She never seems to blink on camera. Her technique and instincts will surely grow subtler with time, but for now her star quality — and she has it, all right — sees her through. At one point in director and co-writer Sebastian Lelio’s drama, waitress and club singer Marina (Vega) is confronted by the disdainful son of Marina’s recently deceased boyfriend.
“I don’t know what you are,” he says. Every second of the film serves as a rebuke to that insult.
“A Fantastic Woman” is the likely front-runner for this year’s foreign language Academy Award. Its clarity of purpose translates to an effectively lean and straightforward story of adversity and survival, in any language. It begins with a bit of sleight-ofhand misdirection: We meet Orlando (Francisco Reyes), a Santiago printing shop owner in his late 50s, and follow him to his local sauna. Somewhere, either in his office or elsewhere, he has misplaced an envelope containing vouchers for a vacation.
Then we meet his partner, the one for whom he’s planning the trip. Marina’s introduced singing a defiant song equating a faded love affair to yesterday’s newspaper. These two, however, are very much in love, with no fade-out in sight. After Marina’s concert and an hour or two on the dance floor together, they go home. Then Orlando suffers an aneurysm and dies shortly afterward at the hospital.
This unexpected death, with a tense and sidelined Marina waiting for word in the hallway, occurs early in “A Fantastic Woman.” The film is about the aftermath, and the closure denied its protagonist. Lelio and co-writer Gonzalo Maza set up a series of clashes between Marina and the familial and societal forces of resistance. Orlando’s brother Gabo (Luis Gnecco) arrives at the hospital and clumsily relays to Marina that she’s no longer needed, or wanted. The bruises on Orlando’s body, caused by a stairwell tumble after his aneurysm, draw the skeptical interest of a detective (Amparo Noguera).
Remnants of Orlando’s pre-Marina life intrude as well, from an ex-wife (Aline Kuppenheim) trying to muscle Marina out of Orlando’s apartment, to an adult son (Nicolas Saavedra) seething with rage. Where the movie goes from there, and how Marina asserts her place in a world trying desperately not to accommodate her, occasionally breaks stride with conventional realism to include a fantasy musical sequence or flashes of a ghostly Orlando. Marina spies him, still, on the dance floor, or in a rearview car mirror.
Some of these flourishes feel routine. But Vega is another, formidable story, and there’s a graceful finality in how “A Fantastic Woman” brings its central couple together for a farewell in a most unlikely locale.