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- 2017
- R
- 1 h 44 m
- 2017
- R
- 1 h 44 m
Summary A Fantastic Woman is the story of Marina, a waitress and singer, and Orlando, an older man, who are in love and planning for the future. After Orlando suddenly falls ill and dies, Marina is forced to confront his family and society, and to fight again to show them who she is: complex, strong, forthright, fantastic. [Sony Pictures Classic...
Directed By: Sebastián Lelio
Written By: Gonzalo Maza, Eliseo Altunaga, Sebastián Lelio
- 2017
- R
- 1 h 44 m
- 2017
- R
- 1 h 44 m
A Fantastic Woman
7.0
Where to Watch
Summary A Fantastic Woman is the story of Marina, a waitress and singer, and Orlando, an older man, who are in love and planning for the future. After Orlando suddenly falls ill and dies, Marina is forced to confront his family and society, and to fight again to show them who she is: complex, strong, forthright, fantastic. [Sony Pictures Classic...
Directed By: Sebastián Lelio
Written By: Gonzalo Maza, Eliseo Altunaga, Sebastián Lelio
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 43 Critic Reviews
84
95% Positive
41 Reviews
41 Reviews
5% Mixed
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 43 Critic Reviews
84
95% Positive
41 Reviews
41 Reviews
5% Mixed
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
A Fantastic Woman is a brilliant film: a richly humane, moving study of someone keeping alive the memory and the fact of love.
Shocking and enraging, funny and surreal, rapturous and restorative, this is a film of startling intensity and sinuous mood shifts wrapped in a rock-solid coherence of vision.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 118 User Ratings
7.0
75% Positive
89 Ratings
89 Ratings
8% Mixed
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
16% Negative
19 Ratings
19 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 118 User Ratings
7.0
75% Positive
89 Ratings
89 Ratings
8% Mixed
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
16% Negative
19 Ratings
19 Ratings
This is a quite powerful film which features a very impressive performance by the main actor, Daniela Vega, as Marina Vidal. It's sad to see how people treat her due to her being transgender. Its very much a piece of social commentary. I was quite impressed by the steely look of determination on her face, when she has to deal with insults and hatred. I felt the film was quite immersive due to the sheer power of presence she has.
This is very much a thought provoking film, one I'd highly recommend for its ability to make you question the point of view of a transgender person in the scenario Marina finds herself in (having lost her partner).
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The best surprise in A Fantastic Woman might be how lived-in Marina’s existence feels despite the tenuousness of her housing, her romantic fulfillment, and her legal rights.
Through all of it, Vega – a singer and performance artist whose advice Lelio initially sought in devising his story – makes an indelible impression, absorbing each sling and arrow with a fatigued air of having suffered worse, and hoping for better. She and her film make a powerful case for deserving it.
Director and co-writer Sebastian Lelio keeps the melodrama muted, allowing Vega’s expressive passivity to move viewers. She’s a tragically striking character, a face of abruptly lost love seldom seen in movies.
The film would only be very good were it not for Vega’s performance, which ranks right up there with the five women nominated for best actress this year and, in some cases, surpasses them.
Superficial when it means to be elliptical and regressive in its attempts to promote pride and tolerance, Sebastián Lelio’s film is beautiful but vacant, the type of melodrama that reminds us that they shouldn’t always make them like they used to.
Tonight the Hudson Film Society of Quebec did a showing of Una Mujer Fantástica (A Fantastic Woman), which won the 2018 Oscar for Best Foreign Film (Chile). The film is a fascinating portrait of a transgender woman who had a tender, loving relationship with an older man. His death caused her a paroxysm of grief, which she was barely able to indulge, because his passing allowed his alienated family, including ex-wife and adult children, to disavow the unconventional relationship that had embarrassed the family and made them feel disgraced. Marina, a beautiful and elegant young woman who had made the transition from male to female (played by the enigmatic Daniela Vega, a real-life transgender woman), found herself in a nightmare scenario where she was evicted and without rights when the man who had protected and cherished her suddenly died of an aneurysm. In conservative Chile, his sudden death while sharing his bed with a trans woman meant she was subject to questioning from the police as well as a humiliating physical examination that was an outright violation of privacy.
Vega started her transgender transformation in Chile at the age of 17 and was trained to be an opera singer from the age of eight. Director Sebastián Lelio found Vega styling hair in Santiago while he was researching transgender individuals and their experiences. Vega stood out among the others, and Lelio wrote the script based on her complex character and a desire to answer the philosophical question, “What is a woman?” Vega carries the entire film from start to finish, and her expressive eyes and features convey a subtle array of emotions and every conceivable shade of grief, anger, fear, love, forgiveness, and fortitude. Sometimes the subtlety requires patience on the part of the viewer (silences, long pauses, terse remarks). However, it doesn’t matter how the viewer feels about the politics of sex change. By the end of this film, you will perceive only a sensitive, beautiful individual who navigates her way through sorrow and intolerance and is merely a human being, one who is as she says, “of flesh and blood.”
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“A FANTASTIC WOMAN is the story of Marina, a waitress and singer, and Orlando, an older man, who are in love and planning for the future. After Orlando suddenly falls ill and dies, Marina is forced to confront his family and society, and to fight again to show them who she is: complex, strong, forthright, fantastic.” So goes the synopsis for this movie nothing mentioning that she is transgender which is the reason for/of the movie.
Sixty years ago it would have been Orlando’s mistress and twenty years ago his male lover, today it is his transgender partner. When Orlando unexpectedly dies, just like the mistress and **** lover in past years and still sometimes today, if they aren’t married, the family comes and takes away everything the couple had from the car to the apartment and even the dog. The most hurtful is not being allowed to attend the funeral or say goodbye.
The mistress, the **** lover and Marina had/have to face the indignities that all might face such as being called names, accused of murdering the lover, being abused by him or, with the latter two, being beaten up and possibly killed for being **** or transgender but Marina has the extra humiliation of having to strip for an excruciating body exam under the eyes of a female detective and a male doctor.
Maybe I have been around too long and have read too many books, seen too many films and movies where the mistress and/or **** man has been shunned or I have personally seen what happens to a **** couple when one dies and I don’t see the transgender person being any more degraded, though yes, today they are the target of hate and being misunderstood.
The director Sebastian Lelio, who also wrote the screenplay with Gonzalo Maza, doesn’t seem to involve the audience in what should be an emotionally touching story except in two scenes, with one being the strip search, which definitely shows how people can mistreat other people and the one scene that shows Marina for being the strong person she is.
Marina is played by transgender actress Daniela Vega who seems to be hindered by the director. There are certain moments when she shows vulnerability and/or strength but not enough of them. As difficult as it is for someone in that position one doesn’t feel empathy for her character. People who are new to what transgender and/or **** live through and what hostilities they face may find this movie interesting.
“A Fantastic Woman” is nominated for an Oscar as Best Foreign Film but I don’t recommend seeing it.
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The movie barely pushes an hour and a half run time. If not for the filler, It wouldn't even touch an hour. Now, I don't mind some filler (and by filler I mean characters doing basic things onscreen, no dialogue is spoken, pretty much just a soundtrack playing and that's it, Nothing of importance is going on and it's just added to pad the runtime) but this movie is easily 1/3 filler, **** I freaking hate it.
It bogs down what could have been a good and well-told story. Because there's so much filler, We are given very little dialogue and very little character exploration. So it's kind of hard to care about what the main character is dealing with when we know so little and learn so little about her and her plight. And it's such a disappointment because this movie easily could have earned that high Metacritic score that is simply doesn't deserve.
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Production Company
Participant,
Fabula,
Komplizen Film,
Muchas Gracias,
Setembro Cine,
Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF),
ARTE
Release Date Nov 17, 2017
Duration 1 h 44 m
Rating R
Genres
Tagline Fearless, Powerful, Ravishing.
Awards
Academy Awards, USA
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
Golden Globes, USA
• 1 Nomination
The Platino Awards for Iberoamerican Cinema
• 7 Wins & 11 Nominations
