The greatest movie ever!

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

'Never was a shade of any plant dearer and more lovely, or more sweet' - the English translation of Handel's aria form his opera 'Serse' - Ombra mai fu di vegetabile, cara ed amabile, soave più plays a significant role in this Oscar and Golden Globe winning foreign film from Chile: it is heard throughout and closes the film with the main character Marina singing it to the audience. The music is exquisite as sung by Daniela Vega, a gifted mezzo-soprano and actress, who in life is indeed a Chilean transgender female.The theme of the film - the pain and ridicule transgender people face by society - is daring and well handled. Marina (Daniela Vega) is a young waitress and aspiring singer whose lover is Orlando (Francisco Reyes), 20 years her senior, who owns a printing company. They are in love and planning for the future. After celebrating Marina's birthday one evening, Orlando falls gravely ill and as Marina prepares to take him to the hospital Orlando falls down the stairs. Marina rushes him to the emergency room, but he passes away just after arriving at the hospital. Instead of being able to mourn her lover, suddenly Marina is treated with suspicion. The doctors and Orlando's family don't trust her. A woman detective investigates Marina to see if she was involved in his death because of the bruises and bleeding resulting from the fall down the stairs. Orlando's ex-wife forbids her from attending the funeral. Orlando's son threatens to throw Marina out of the flat she shared with Orlando. Marina is a trans woman and for most of Orlando s family, her sexual identity is an aberration, a perversion. So Marina struggles for the right to be herself. She battles the very same forces that she has spent a lifetime fighting just to become the woman she is now - complex, strong, forthright and fantastic. A strong cast, fine direction (Sebastián Lelio who wrote the screenplay with Gonzalo Maza), exceptional musical scoring (Nani García and Matthew Herbert) and cinematography (Benjamín Echazarreta) allow the impact of Daniela Vega's superlative performance to glow. The film is a bit slow moving, but that allows time for the interplay of Marina's strength and the family's prejudice to gain focus. A solid film. Grady Harp, July 18

Marina Vidal (Daniela Vega) is a transgender woman and aspiring singer in her twenties and living in Santiago, Chile. After the death of her lover, a man in his fifties with an ex-wife and an adult son, Marina is left alone in dealing with her grief and the aftermath of the death.In addition to the burden of grief, Marina must also deal with humiliating and prejudicial situations around her transgender status. She subtly shows an attitude of "I hate having to go through this again but I can." Interestingly, her transgender status is used to her advantage in a later scene in the film.Vega is in nearly every scene of the film and must carry it on her shoulders. She does the job superbly. She ably conveys awkwardness and vulnerability as her character attempts to maintain what is rightfully hers while being aware that many battles may not be won.Much of the film follows Marina as she journeys through the city's urban atmosphere to numb her pain. The last quarter of the film takes a different twist that is less interesting than what precedes it. But "A Fantastic Woman" is a good film overall mainly due to the subtle skills of its lead performer.

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."

A Fantastic Woman is a very simple film, far more simple than it initially appears. Essentially the story boils down to this: A transgender woman has to deal with the family of her lover after his sudden and unexpected death. The film deals with themes of transphobia and grief, and it explores those particular themes very well, in some very confronting and uncomfortable ways, but from a story and character perspective, this film often leaves a lot to be desired.Marina, the titular 'Fantastic Woman', is defined purely by the fact that she's transgender. This isn't a big flaw per se, as the film is explicitly about how the culture of Chile and the world at large responds to that fact, but she doesn't really have much character besides that. She's a singer, she boxes, and she's very driven to get what she wants, despite the high amounts of adversity she faces throughout the film. The driving force of her character is her desire to pay her respects to her dead boyfriend one last time, while his family refuses to give her that, seeing her as a shameful part of his final moments, best forgotten. She isn't given that much development besides that, and it leaves us with a very one, maybe two-dimensional character with no real flaws that have consequences within the story.However the main issue I have with the film is that it basically abandons several plot threads as it goes along. Early in the film, there is some suspicion of foul play surrounding the boyfriend's death and she, being the last person to be with him, is the prime suspect. However this is mostly abandoned after one particularly uncomfortable scene where she is forced to have a physical examination by the detective and a doctor, which after its conclusion is basically hand waved away without much further thought. It is not brought up again (to my recollection) as to whether she is still seen as somehow complicit in her boyfriend's death, or whether the police decided to abandon the case altogether.Another plot thread that seemed to be abandoned is the entire opening scene, where it establishes the couple's relationship before the man dies, where he mentions buying tickets to see a famous waterfall in 10 days time, but has misplaced the tickets. To my memory, she never finds the tickets or goes to the waterfall to do anything after the conclusion of the movie. It just seems like another missed opportunity for further development.I do want to make clear though, that I do think this film is still worth watching. Transgender characters are still relatively rare in film and television, and even when they do pop up every now and then, they are often portrayed by non-transgender actors in heavy makeup. However Daniela Vega is herself transgender, and she plays the role, limited as it is, incredibly well. The cinematography is also quite beautiful, and there are several visual setpieces that looked great (while not really serving much purpose to the plot) It's definitely something worth watching on the big screen, but I probably won't put it on for a second time.