The chilean winner of The Academy Award for best foreign language film is a powerful love drama set in the heart of Santiago.
A Fantastic Woman is the tale of Marina, a young transgender woman living in Santiago working as a waitress and a singer. She has a relationship to a much older man whom she has recently moved in with, when he dies of an aneurism her life is turned around and a lot of transphobia from the older mans family begins.
Marina is played by the fantastic Daniela Vega, and what a fantastic performance it is. I cannot start to praise her as much as she deserves, It is easily one of the best performances of 2017, and quite frankly everyone should see how spectacularly good she is. All parts of her acting is phenomenal and filled with every kind of emotions possible.
The film is directed by Sebastian Lelio, a fantastic director who did 2013s great film Gloria, and also directed Disobedience with Rachel Weisz. His work on A Fantastic Woman simply terrific and everything in the movie is done with decency.
Chile is quite the conservative country, so I can only imagine how hard transgenders must have it here, which is why A Fantastic Woman is such a great and important film.
I had not seen this film before the 2018 Academy Awards, but I can totally understand why it won. It is a phenomenally film on every aspect, and if you are only going to see one film from Chile this year, make it A Fantastic Woman.
Score: 9/10
Cinematophile 