A Fantastic Woman

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.

 Rather, 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 The lyrics dismiss her recent lover as outdated as yesterday’s papers.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.” So, too, Trump ignores the magnificent contribution that some 15,000 transgender soldiers have made to America in insisting on his ban against their service.