A Fantastic Woman
| Release Date: November 17, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
86
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 43 Critics
Positive:
41
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawMar 11, 2018
A Fantastic Woman is a brilliant film: a richly humane, moving study of someone keeping alive the memory and the fact of love. Read full review
100
Total FilmKevin HarleyFeb 26, 2018
Defiant, determined, Vega delivers a star-making performance in a drama of embattled grief, directed with heart. Read full review
100
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonFeb 22, 2018
In our increasingly polarized time, A Fantastic Woman bridges the gap between ignorance and understanding through the transcendent power of art. Read full review
100
Consequence of SoundDanielle SolzmanFeb 3, 2018
To say that Vega is marvelous in her portrayal of Marina is nothing short of an understatement. She’s an inspiration to transgender and non-binary people across the globe, all while delivering the performance of a lifetime. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternFeb 1, 2018
Beyond the looking and seeing, this extraordinary film wants us to feel the coherence of Marina’s life. She is, she insists with beautiful passion, flesh and blood, like everyone else. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangNov 16, 2017
There are moments here that arrest you with their hallucinatory power. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottNov 15, 2017
Psychologically astute and socially aware as the film is, it is also infused with mystery and melodrama, with bright colors and emotional shadows. Read full review
100
CineVuePatrick GambleFeb 17, 2017
It's how the film handles grief and alienation which makes Marina's story so compelling. Read full review
100
The GuardianRyan GilbeyFeb 17, 2017
It may be a timely film, but it is its timelessness, as well as its depths of compassion, that qualify it as a great one. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyFeb 17, 2017
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. Read full review
100
Screen InternationalWendy IdeFeb 17, 2017
Driven by a powerhouse performance by mesmerising transgender actress Vega, the fifth feature from Sebastián Lelio combines urgent naturalism with occasional flickers of fantasy to impressive, and wrenchingly emotional effect. Read full review
100
VarietyGuy LodgeFeb 17, 2017
Vega’s tough, expressive, subtly anguished performance deserves so much more than political praise. It’s a multi-layered, emotionally polymorphous feat of acting, nurtured with pitch-perfect sensitivity by her director, who maintains complete candor on Marina’s condition without pushing her anywhere she wouldn’t herself go. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattJan 26, 2018
It’s heartbreaking, illuminating, and yes, fantastic, just to watch her (Marina) live. Read full review
91
The PlaylistJessica KiangFeb 17, 2017
The superb Vega’s steady, liquid, fathomless gaze is so direct that we come to understand that behind it, behind the barricade of defenses she’s built up against an unfriendly world, she is no enigma at all: she is completely known to herself. Read full review
90
SlateSam AdamsFeb 1, 2018
Focusing the camera on Vega, an openly trans actress (apparently Chile’s first), allows A Fantastic Woman to tell a different, richer kind of story and allows us to process the subtleties of her performance without always having to evaluate the success of the underlying transformation. Read full review
90
Village VoiceApril WolfeJan 31, 2018
A Fantastic Woman shows that the obvious insults a trans person may endure will, of course, weigh on the psyche, but the death by a thousand well-meaning cuts hurts as well. Read full review
90
TheWrapInkoo KangJan 31, 2018
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. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrFeb 21, 2018
Mirrors loom large in this movie, and Marina reflects back an image that too much of society refuses to see, to the point where she herself starts to doubt her own reflection. Yet the film’s most potent and lasting image involves a hand mirror and a steady gaze, and it serves as a breathtaking poetic metaphor about gender, identity, love, and the human soul. All you have to do, says Lelio, is look and see. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyFeb 2, 2018
Suffused with fantastical elements, dreamlike sequences and hallucinatory images, A Fantastic Woman stars Daniela Vega, a trans actress, and her performance roots the film in a kind of intimate verisimilitude. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversFeb 1, 2018
A Fantastic Woman catches a human being in the challenging and exhilarating process of inventing herself. The result is unique and unforgettable. Read full review
85
UproxxKeith PhippsFeb 5, 2018
Vega’s remarkable as Marina. Her character never opens up to anyone, but Vega skillfully conveys an inner life governed by sadness and a will for self-preservation. Read full review
83
The Film StageEd FranklFeb 18, 2017
Timely issues of transgender rights both in Latin and North America help make A Fantastic Woman a bolder, brasher film, fiery in comparison with Gloria’s relatively tenderness, but anchored once more by a stellar central performance Read full review
83
IndieWireDavid EhrlichFeb 17, 2017
While the storytelling grows frustratingly elliptical, Lelio so desperate to constrain the drama that he resorts to removing helpful pieces of it, the scenes that remain are succinct and evocative. Read full review
80
The TelegraphTim RobeyApr 4, 2018
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. Read full review
80
EmpireHelen O'HaraFeb 26, 2018
Given it could be re-titled ‘Microaggressions: The Movie’, this is an unsurprisingly upsetting watch at times, but it’s made compelling by Vega’s dignified, heartfelt performance. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBarbara VanDenburghFeb 22, 2018
The film doesn’t need to make a case for Marina’s basic humanity and smartly avoids clichés of persecution storytelling, instead ceding the floor to Vega’s magnetic presence and soulfulness. She is a marvel, and if one doesn’t come away loving her as Orlando did, it’s no shortcoming of the film. Read full review
80
The AtlanticDavid SimsFeb 2, 2018
A Fantastic Woman, nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category at this year’s Academy Awards, is a tremendous portrait of grief and prejudice. It’s also an incredible showcase for Vega, who excels in a role that’s unfortunately rare in film—as a trans character who’s more than the butt of a joke or an exoticized other. Read full review
80
Time OutPhil de SemlyenFeb 1, 2018
A gripping, chastening study in what it’s like to spend your entire life behind enemy lines, A Fantastic Woman offers uplift, too – as well as the odd surreal touch. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaNov 14, 2017
I just wish Vega and Lelio let us in a little more to see her as an individual, aside from the hostility she encounters. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleSteve DavisMar 1, 2018
Without preaching from the pulpit, A Fantastic Woman powerfully communicates the hostility and hatred that persons such as Marina encounter simply due to their otherness. In its way, it resembles those Hollywood-era message movies like "Gentleman’s Agreement" and "Pinky," but without the self-congratulatory importance that weighs those films down with all the subtlety of an iron anchor. Read full review
75
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallApr 4, 2018
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. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreFeb 18, 2018
Vega makes Marina noble, martyred and yet defiant, fiercely clinging to her femininity when we’re so desperate for her to bust Bruno’s nose. It’s a performance of sublime, constrained fury and tender conciliation. Read full review
75
ObserverRex ReedFeb 14, 2018
The cast is uniformly excellent, with Francisco Reyes a particularly likable beam of strength and light as the unfortunate Orlando, but the film’s great triumph is Daniela Vega, a transgender actress and singer, who makes an indelible impression in the leading role. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerFeb 9, 2018
If Pedro Almodóvar, especially in his early days, had directed this film, he might have brought out the black comedy inherent in the piece, which would have made both the blackness and the comedy more fully resonate. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorFeb 8, 2018
In the script Lelio co-wrote with Gonzalo Maza, the lover's family may be conveniently ghastly and the authorities who investigate the death puzzlingly erratic (as the film flirts unsuccessfully with mystery), but a quietly honest centre never wavers. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsFeb 8, 2018
A Fantastic Woman is the likely front-runner for this year’s foreign language Academy Award. Its clarity of purpose translates to an effectively lean and straightforward story of adversity and survival, in any language. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayFeb 7, 2018
The moments when A Fantastic Woman takes off come in bursts of magical realism, such as when Marina suddenly finds herself heading off impossible head winds, or leading a sparkly dance number. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleDavid WiegandFeb 7, 2018
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. Read full review
75
The Associated PressLindsey BahrFeb 1, 2018
It’s Vega’s extraordinary performance, full of grace and depth, that keeps A Fantastic Woman in check from becoming something either too campy or too sanctimonious. It’s one that has the power to make an audience really understand and internalize why it is an act of bravery to simply live life as herself, and perhaps even change some minds in the process. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyNov 15, 2017
At its most compelling as a conventional character study of an unconventional female lead. Read full review
70
The New YorkerAnthony LaneJan 22, 2018
Now and then, Lelio departs into reverie and daydream, and it’s here, loosening the bonds of his naturalistic style, that he draws us closer to the mystery of Marina. Read full review
60
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottMar 7, 2018
While those flaws might conspire to keep A Fantastic Woman from being unassailably fantastic as a whole, there's no denying that it is fantastically timely, and touching to boot. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineChristopher GrayJan 28, 2018
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. Read full review
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