Pride Month: “A Fantastic Woman” is a Fantastic Movie
Slow-moving character studies are not widely known for being exciting and fun to watch. However, A Fantastic Woman (originally: Una Mujer Fantástica, 2017, Prime Video) rewards viewers’ patience with a gut-wrenching, multi-faceted hero’s struggle that pulls zero punches and makes you cringe. Which is good; if our heroine has to go through the crap piled on her, then we can give her the dignity of watching with compassion.
There’s not much plot to the film: trans woman Marina Vidal (Daniela Vega) and much older cis man Orlando (Francisco Reyes) are deeply in love. He dies, she mourns, she has to deal with his family being a bunch of creeps.
That’s it on the surface. Scratch just a little bit and you’ll find some everyday microaggressions against trans people lobbed at Marina. Random phrases thrown around like, “What are you?” or a cop telling her that he only recognizes the name on her pre-transition ID. Little cuts and nips here and there that, when dealt with all day every day from multiple angles, add up to a lifetime of dehumanization.
Marina just wants to mourn her lover, but law enforcement (think Law & Order: SVU: Santiago, Chile) and Orlando’s family have other ideas. They cannot and will not accept Marina and Orlando’s relationship for what it was: a happy, romantic love between two consenting adults.
With the exception of Orlando’s brother Gabo (Luis Gnecco), the family can’t wrap their little minds around Marina as a human person and refuses to accept her as an important part of Orlando’s life. As Orlando’s gross son Bruno (Nicolás Saavedra) tries to kick Marina out of his father’s apartment — which she was in the process of moving into when he died — she tells him that Orlando had given her the dog Diabla. Bruno is apoplectic, stating that he used to sleep next to Diabla until he couldn’t stand her smell anymore. Let’s go over that again: Bruno thought the dog was too smelly for him, yet he won’t let Marina have her because his father gave Marina the dog. From this point on, Diabla will become the film’s metaphor for Marina’s dignity.
Unfortunately, Bruno will keep popping up in the movie to participate in his family’s abuse of Marina. What starts with the microaggressions mentioned above swiftly turns into vicious verbal harassment and eventual violence. Bruno and the other family members want to mourn Orlando in peace by excluding Marina, completely unaware of their own hypocrisy as they chase her down a street so they can abuse her.
Again: all Marina wants to do is grieve in peace. You know, like a person.
Then there’s Santiago SVU, represented by Detective Adriana (Amparo Noguera). While on the way to the hospital, Orlando fell down a flight of concrete stairs. As a result of his bruises and head contusion, Det. Adriana suspects that Marina was an abused transgender prostitute who fought back. And while Det. Adriana starts out sympathetic towards Marina (even if that sympathy is misdirected), she refuses to believe that our heroine was anything but a victim. Once again, the nature of Marina and Orlando’s relationship is called into question and Marina is not even given the dignity of personal agency.
Det. Adriana goes so far as to force Marina to come to the police station and strip down so that a medical examiner can take naked photos of her for possible evidence of abuse. As Marina changes into the pointless dressing gown, she overhears the doctor ask Det. Adriana a by-now familiar refrain in A Fantastic Woman: what is this person? Det. Adriana explains, in a short and incomplete way, what transgender means. At least the detective makes sure to tell the doctor not to deadname Marina, so that’s something.
For a third time it’s worth remembering: Marina and Orlando were engaged in a loving, mutually consensual, adult relationship. With Orlando gone, no one is able to see Marina as a fully-formed, functional human being.
The only people in the movie who accept Marina as she is, no questions, no insinuations, no microaggressions, are her sister Wanda (Trinidad González) and brother-in-law Gastón (Néstor Cantillana). With them, we finally get to see Marina relax, talk, take a well-needed deep breath. It’s too bad we don’t get more scenes with them because the rest of the movie is relentless.
Daniela Vega was originally hired as a transgender consult on the movie. There’s no “trans-face” happening here. Marina is forced to grieve her lover on top of the usual everyday insults and aggressions aimed at the trans community. Not one person seems to care that she’s deeply in mourning.
At Marina’s lowest point, we’re treated to a gorgeous choreographed fantasy number. The scene is a sweet reminder that while Marina is forced to fend off the ignorance and hate of a world that judges her solely on her exterior, no one can take away how she sees herself.
*Disclaimer: While I am not myself a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, I am a second generation ally with many, many friends and immediate family members who are.
