Oscar front-runner 'Fantastic Woman' tells an illuminating transgender story

Patrick Ryan | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption 'A Fantastic Woman' is a complex tale of love, loss 'A Fantastic Woman' is a Chilean drama about the complexities a trans woman faces after her boyfriend dies.

Chile's A Fantastic Woman tells a different kind of transgender story.

The Spanish-language movie — nominated for the best-foreign-language film Academy Award — is a hypnotic, heart-rending meditation on grief and otherness, following a young transgender waitress named Marina (trans actress Daniela Vega) who attempts to pick up the pieces of her shattered life after the sudden death of her much older partner, Orlando (Francisco Reyes). But her mourning is hindered by Orlando's estranged family, who passive aggressively — then violently — try to bar her from his funeral because she's trans.

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Fantastic (in select theaters; expands throughout March) is also an Oscar front-runner, with 19 of 26 prognosticators on awards site Gold Derby predicting it to win on March 4. Director Sebastián Lelio believes the film has resonated because of Vega's lived-in performance and her character's strength in the face of intense discrimination.

"People are grateful for the fact that it’s not a film about transitioning, but a film about a woman who loses her loved one and claims the right to say goodbye — and happens to be transgender," Lelio says. "That little shift in the angle of observation, and the fact that Daniela played Marina, has been very well-received everywhere."

The director didn't know Vega would star in Fantastic when they were introduced. Initially, she was brought on as a trans consultant for Lelio and Gonzalo Maza, who co-wrote the screenplay.

"I wasn't looking for an actress. I was looking for advice and a way to get rid of my ignorance," Lelio says. But as they wrote, "the script started to absorb elements of Daniela’s personality and a certain energy that she has. What she brought (to the character), apart from her talent, is the beauty of her presence and what her body carries: history that’s impregnated in her skin and in her eyes."

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Before she got into acting, Vega, 28, was a hairstylist and opera singer, who performed in small productions in Santiago before her first feature film role in 2014's The Guest. Despite her input as Fantastic's cultural adviser, she cautions that the story is in no way biographical.

"It was more about contributing my feelings and emotions as a trans woman, rather than factual information," Vega says with the help of a translator. "What (Marina and I do) have in common is that we both sing opera and like handsome men."

She describes making the film as a "very draining process," with many scenes that proved emotionally, and at times physically, taxing. After Orlando suffers a fatal heart attack, Marina is met with escalating prejudice: The authorities investigating his death call her "sir" and assume she's a prostitute, before callously strip-searching her at a police station.

Orlando's ex-wife and son are equally deplorable. They threaten to evict Marina from the couple's shared apartment just days after his death, and even enlist relatives to kidnap and tie her up as a means of intimidation. Lelio attempted to balance out these darker moments with fantastical dream sequences, including one at a nightclub where Marina dances in shimmering fringe, feeling both glamorous and empowered.

"I wanted (the audience) to feel we are inside the best version of herself," Lelio says. And while he hopes the movie will enlighten audiences about trans issues and representation on screen, he also doesn't want its message to feel preachy.

"I'm interested in the human problem, and a film has to be more complex than just the cause," Lelio says. "To approach this very real situation that the character was going through — that on top of everything was being interpreted by a real transgender actress — made everything feel like walking on ice. But I was very attracted by the idea of knowing that this was not going to be a socially realistic approach. It is fiction, so we were not trying to re-create things exactly as they are."