Una Mujer Fantástica (2017) and the film’s wider impact on trans rights in Chile and South America as a whole.

Daniela Vega (A Fantastic Woman, Berlinale, 2017) Image by: Martin Kraft (photo.martinkraft.com). CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

When Daniela Vega walked onto the stage at the 2018 Academy Awards ceremony, she was not only there to present the nominated song from Call Me By Your Name (2017), Sufjan Steven’s “Mystery of Love”. She was there to break a boundary, to set a precedent, to become the first transgender person to present at the Oscars, on Hollywood’s biggest stage. Sebastián Lelio, the director of Chile’s nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, attended the ceremony with Vega to represent the film in which she was the star: Una Mujer Fantástica (2017). The film made history by becoming the first from Chile to win the Oscar in this category, also winning awards at Berlinale and the Goya Awards. But even more impressive, is the astounding social impact for queer rights in Chile that the film’s release and consequent worldwide success generated.

The film follows the story of Marina, a transgender woman whose life is catapulted into chaos at the sudden death of her partner, Orlando. The Chilean filmmaker depicts a dichotomy of queer treatment; at first, the pair seem to live in a harmonious existence, but when Orlando suffers from an aneurysm and Marina visits him in hospital, she is not regarded as a respected mourner of a loved one, but rather treated like a dangerous criminal, because of her transgender body. Lelio inscribes the linguistic misgendering towards Marina into the dialogue, such as with the police officer forcefully correcting her “detenida” for “detenido”, unable to legally accept her gender as female. After demanding to see her identity card and learning that her legal name is in fact Daniel, the officer calls her ‘Sir’ and proceeds to question her with hostile suspicion. It is from this moment that any semblance of an idyllic existence free from transphobia for Marina is dissipated, as we witness the difficulties and cruel injustices inflicted onto her reality as a trans woman in a Hispanic society.

 The deep-rooted Catholicism of Hispanic culture has a large influence on the stigmatisation of the trans communities in South American countries, particularly through their systemic history of denouncing homosexuality and transsexuality. Whilst a number of countries in the Americas have been starting to legalise queer activity such as same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption, service in the military and changing of official identity, there are still many spaces in which queer people are denied basic rights of expression, and are not protected by anti-discrimination laws. However, despite certain legalisations, public opinions vary in their support of them, with many citizens actively polling against queer activity in their countries. To use Chile as a relevant example, 24% of opinions polled in 2023 voted against same-sex marriage. Therefore, whilst queer tolerance may be seeing gradual progress in South America through legalisation, extreme violence and hate crimes towards these communities persist to this day.

LGBT parade in front of La Moneda, Santiago de Chile, 2009. Image by Ciudadano Gay- Picasa. CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Wibke Straube’s assessment of queer bodies as ‘unnatural’, ‘polluted’ and ‘inferior’ , can be interpreted in the film as Marina is herded by the doctor to wait in the “Área Sucia” of the hospital, implicitly suggesting that she belongs with the non-sterile impurities. In another pertinent scene, we witness Marina inside Orlando’s car rolling through a car wash – her body completely surrounded in a purifying machine. It is important to note that this is a fleeting moment, a liminal space, in which Marina sees Orlando’s ghost. As she is being cruelly denied the basic human right to mourn her lost love, she remembers the person who accepted and cherished her queer body as beautiful, not ‘unnatural’. This is accentuated as Marina drives away with Aretha Franklin’s (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman playing on the radio.

Despite the hardship and suffering displayed throughout, Lelio’s film does not fall into the “tragic gay ending” stereotype. For all the rejections of her femininity, Marina tenaciously insists on her legitimacy as a woman, combating the transphobia just as she fights through the impossibly strong wind pushing against her in a breathlessly beautiful surrealist sequence. The ‘thematic leitmotif of the wind introduced’ links to Marina’s final operatic performance, ‘whose lyrics end with “tuoni, lampi, e procelle | non v’oltraggino mai la cara pace” (Handel 1738)’ – translated to: May thunder, lightning and storms | never profane your peace. Against all physical and verbal aggressions, Marina refused to allow the bigoted storm of social norms to change the way she wished to present in the world.

In the wake of Una Mujer Fantástica (2017)’s global recognition, LGBTQI+ activists used this momentum to force the Chilean jurisdiction to approve the gender identity bill to allow individuals to change their official details - a particular difficulty that Marina suffers in the film. The government responded by approving such laws as of late 2018. It can even be suggested that the film acted as a catalyst for further monumental breakthroughs in Chile, such as the legalisation of same-sex marriage and adoption in 2022. Political scientists have stated that support for trans rights became a matter of national pride during this time. We can therefore appreciate the power of cinema as a tool for societal change, and the importance to tell these stories of marginalisation and injustice on the big screen, in the hope to eventually achieve a reality devoid of homophobia and transphobia in Hispanic societies. As Daniela Vega, our fantastic woman, asked of the Oscars audience, we should feel invited “to open our hearts and our feelings to feel the reality, to feel the love”, and ultimately accept and respect everyone’s right to exist in the world, in the body they desire.