A Fantastic Woman (2018)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Great Film overall

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

A Fantastic Woman follows the journey of a woman named Marina. Basically this is little bit of spoiler her short time lover dies and has to deal with his family and the culture where she lives in which is in Chile. One of the major issues is how the cops mistreat her because she is a transgender woman. The films score is excellent. There is one scene is the film that last around three minutes that is strictly strobe light which could cause people to have seizures. I can see why this film won the Oscar for Best Foreign film. I am going against most other film critics; I am giving this film 9 and ¾ stars out of 10.

The title corrects Marina's description by Sonia, Marina's newly dead lover Orlando's ex-wife. Sonia calls her a "chimera" because she can't wrap her head around the idea of a trans-sexual. So, too, her son Bruno's sneering "I don't know what you are." Sonia expresses the ostensibly civilized response to the woman born with a male body. That's slightly better than Bruno and his friends who confront Marina with vulgarity and violence. "Chimera" suggests an unnatural monster. Marina's brother-in-law, though restrained by her sister, is only a little more accepting of her. Orlando's brother understands and respects their love - but, with his damaged leg, he can't stand up to Sonia. But Marina is "fantastic" - a superlative creature in her sensitivity, generosity, emotional openness, warmth and even a blazing talent. The term includes the "phantom" of her transcending her congenital physicality-but goes beyond that. She is arguably the most fantastic character in the year's world cinema - justly awarded the Best Foreign Film Oscar. (Having seen only The Square and Loveless, I didn't think I'd say that.) The narrative is framed by Marina's two singing performances, which show her transcending her loss and abuse. In the first, Orlando attends her club performance of a bluesy ballad. The lyrics dismiss her recent lover as outdated as yesterday's papers. It's a sensual, witty performance by an apparent woman. The film closes on Marina performing a magnificent aria by Vivaldi, called "The Bride is Despised," beginning in long shot then closing in till the singer fills the screen - and us - with her emotion and beauty. Both songs work in context. In the first, Marina enjoys a romance contrary to the song's pretence to disruption. If its articulated loss anticipates Orlando's death, the words are even more ironic because Marina can't put Orlando behind her like yesterday's news. His family won't let her - not properly grieve him, nor properly move out of his flat. While Sonia denies her any farewell, Bruno and his friends assault her criminally. The end lyrics summarize Marina's alienation from Orlando's family, their wholly unwarranted hatred and bile. She is the "bride" they despised and abused. But her magnificent contralto voice shows her soaring beyond their minuscule minds and hearts. Her performance shows her transcending the world's unfair rejection, and the loss of her lover, to achieve a magnificent success as both a woman and a singer. Orlando's family turns physically threatening and initially even deny her the couple's dog Diabla. (In that family the devil has to be a woman.) The police process seems calculated to humiliate her, declaring her distinctiveness as guilt. Orlando died just as Marina was moving in with him. So his death compounds her emotional loss with complete deracination, homelessness. Her search of his sauna locker for a lost document gives us - and her - hopes for a will that might somehow secure her. That proves a blind alley. Ultimately Marina's survival is based wholly on her own strength of character, virtue, ability and will. In one brilliant shot the naked Marina has a small mirror over her genitals - showing her face. The face shows the woman Marina knows she emotionally and psychologically is and was born to be. The police define her by the male genitalia she still carries, but that mirror - and her indomitable sense of self - know better. This film may help us come to that understanding too. But confident I'm not. After the film, the cowboy-hatted senior at the next urinal volunteered: "That's the worst film I've ever seen."

Knowing a little of the story before hand I was not holding great hopes for this evening's cinema excursion. However, I was most pleasantly surprised from the opening music which lead us the steamy interior of the sauna where slowly, in the background, naked bodies could be seen imerging from the low lit darkness. Indeed one of the beauties of the film is the wonderful camera work. The shot in the elevator was worth the price of the ticket alone. Daniela Varga is a great actress and has to hold the audience's attention as she appears in almost every scene. She certainly held me in the palm of her hand and I had difficulty not taking my eyes off her. Daniela further exploited her talents by doing her own singing. The acting was superb from all the supporting cast but it was Daniela's film, with the help of Sebastian Lelio, of course.

"A Fantastic Woman" (R, 1:44) is 2017 drama and was Chile's entry into the Foreign Language category at the 90th Annual Academy Awards, where it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.Marina Vidal (Daniela Vega) is a transgender woman whose partner, Orlando (Francisco Reyes), is a divorced man who is old enough to be her father. The two seem to be very much in love, as evidenced by their behavior during an evening of dinner and dancing, which ends with a passionate embrace and lead-in to a love-making session (off camera) in the Santiago, Chile apartment where they both live (since Marina recently moved in). When Orlando wakes up in the midst of a serious medical episode, falls down a flight of stairs and then dies shortly after Marina gets him to the hospital, her life is turned upside down (and inside out) even more than it would be for most people when they lose a loved one. The rest of the movie follows Marina as she tries to do the right thing and maintain her dignity amidst questions and challenges from Orlando's relatives - and others. The police want to know why Orlando's body had minor injuries and they go as far as to ask Marina intimate details about her sex life - and her sexuality. Orlando's ex-wife wants Orlando's car turned over to her - and ends up using her meeting with Marina to callously insult her. Orlando's son wants her (immediately) out of the apartment that she shared with Orlando. Lastly, Orlando's family and friends, as a group, (with one notable exception) make it crystal clear that they want her to stay away from her deceased lover's memorial service and funeral."A Fantastic Woman" is a well-made and important film, solidly written, terrifically acted, timely and never more relevant. Directed by Sebastián Lelio and written by Lelio and Gonzalo Meza, the story concentrates on Marina, as a person, especially her humanity and her basic decency. The film makes no judgments about her lifestyle, treating it simply as a fact of her life, while showing challenges she faces living her life and being who she is. She asks for nothing from anyone, except for respect, which she increasingly demands throughout the film, not so much with her words as with her actions. The movie shows little, while saying much, although it does occasionally lose its focus (as with an unsatisfying subplot about a mysterious key). Calling the main character or the film in which she appears "fantastic" may be a bit of a stretch, but they are both remarkable and worthy of our attention - and respect. "A-"