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Movie review: ‘A Fantastic Woman’ is remarkable and emotional Daniela Vega as Marina in "A Fantastic Woman." [Sony Pictures Classics] Thursday Mar 15, 2018 at 2:01 AM A Fantastic Woman (Una Mujer Fantastica); in Spanish with subtitles; 100 min By Chris Honoré for Revels “A Fantastic Woman” opens with a wide shot of the Iquazu Falls on the Argentina-Brazil border. As we soon learn, it’s a destination. Orlando (Francisco Reyes), a 50-ish man, has bought surprise vacation tickets, planning to take his girlfriend, Marina (Daniela Vega), twenty-something, a lovely nightclub singer who is also trained as a classical lyricist. Orlando picks her up at her nightclub, and they go to a Chinese restaurant to celebrate her birthday. They are in love, and their moments together — we see just one evening of them together — are tender, heartfelt and deeply human. However, this brief evening and celebration, filled with the intensity of their feelings for one another, abruptly changes when Orlando wakes in the middle of the night feeling ill. Marina decides she must take him to the hospital. She dresses him, and while he waits in the hall, just outside his apartment, she goes inside for his car keys. Disoriented, Orlando walks to the stairway and falls down, onto a landing below. He is bruised, his scalp bloody. By the time Marina gets him to the hospital, it is too late. Orlando has suffered a brain aneurysm. Filled with a lacerating, unimaginable grief, and feeling suddenly profoundly alone, she leaves the hospital only to be brought back by the police. Marina realizes that she must now not only face the intrusive questioning by the police, but she must confront Orlando’s family, which also has many questions, especially his ex-wife, Sonia (Aline Kuppenheim). And it is at the point that what was implicit is made explicit: Marina is transgender, a lovely, talented young woman imprisoned in the body of a man. And so begins Marina’s journey, one filled with a sense of mourning and loss, all the while feeling the scathing rejection of Orlando’s immediate family. They refuse to see Marina’s humanity, her grief, her wish to be part of the rituals that will bid Orlando goodbye. They tell her unequivocally to stay away and, as soon as possible, move out of his apartment. Their judgments approach the malevolent — Sonia tells Marina that she is a “chimera,” meaning a hybrid of sorts, taken from mythology where it is characterized as a fire-breathing monster. Marina faces their reflexive judgments and stereotypes, all framed by an unwillingness to acknowledge her pain or consider the content of her character while rigidly drawing the lines of what are acceptable societal norms. And all the while, they refuse to consider what it was that Orlando saw in Marina. They are bound by their prejudices and bigotry, and it’s at that point the film turns particularly dark and bitter, the family’s transgender phobias, to a person, driven by ignorance. Look at Marina and see people of color, see anyone who is different, who confronts the humiliation and angst caused by a society in the grips of attitudes that are rooted in fear and intolerance. There is one scene that is actually a wonderful metaphor, absent even one word of dialogue, yet it conveys pages of explication. Marina is walking on a street in Santiago. It’s a windy day. Suddenly the wind begins to blow with such force she finds it necessary to lean forward, struggling to remain upright while moving slowly forward, refusing to take shelter. The scene is lovely, and telling, capturing all that she is experiencing and feeling, not just from Orlando’s family but also from Chileans as a society. There is also a scene where Marina is taking Orlando’s car back to Sonia, and on the radio we hear Aretha Franklin’s “Natural Woman.” The look on Marina’s face is one of resilience and pain while remaining resolute. Both images — the wind and the music — are eloquent and poignant. “A Fantastic Woman” is a remarkable film — know that it just won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film — as is Daniela Vega’s performance. Marina is never made to appear exoticized; rather this is a character study framed by an abiding sensitivity in the face of a wall of rejection that is unrelenting and outrageous. The narrative asks: why can’t Orlando’s family see in Marina what we, the audience, see? What emotions render them blind to her conflicted and damaging isolation as well as her courage and ultimately her love for Orlando?