Tag: Una Mujer Fantástica

Gloria Bell

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

When I saw the Chilean film Gloria (Sebastián Lelio, 2013) some years back, I was blown away. The story of a 50-something divorcée going out and finding herself sounded like the sort of movie I’d hate… and yet, against the odds, Lelio’s film, particularly its feisty central performance by Paulina Garcia, completely won me over. I recall it having a pretty decent Latin music soundtrack too, culminating in Umberto Tozzi’s triumphant disco anthem Gloria.

Leilo having in the interim carved himself out a respectable international movie career – an Oscar for A Fantastic Woman (2017), an impressive change of pace with the British drama Disobedience (2018) – he’s had the inevitable offer to remake some of his Chilean output for the US market. In Gloria Bell, adding the character’s surname to the title for the remake, he collaborates with sometime Oscar-winning actress Julianne Moore.

So all the ingredients should be there to deliver something very special, whether you’ve seen the original and are going for the comparison or you are coming to the story for the first time here. And yet, somehow, the new film feels flat. It lacks the magnetic quality of the original.

Maybe it’s the difference between Chile, rarely seen on the screen here in the English-speaking world, and the US whose movies have flooded our cinemas. Maybe it’s the 80s’ US disco music on the soundtrack which replaces the original’s far more vibrant Latin selection. Certainly, it peps up at the end when the title song (this time the American version recorded by Laura Branigan) comes on, but it’s far too late by then.

Apart from shifting the story from Santiago to Los Angeles and the heroine from Chilean to American, the story is pretty much identical. So it’s hard to believe the problem is the script adaptation. This even applies to the trailers – the trailer for the original Gloria can be seen for comparison further down the page below the Gloria Bell trailer.

The plot has 50-something Gloria (Moore) go to discos in search of love and eventually embark on a relationship with divorced father Arnold (John Turturro). Cue unflattering, over-fifties sex scenes in which he has to remove a medical girdle he wears round his waste, all very commendable in terms of visual representation of that demographic.

Gloria has pretty much learned to let her grown up kids get on with their own separate lives while she gets on with hers. Her son Peter (Michael Cera) is dealing with an absent partner who has left home for a while to find herself and leave him to bring up their child. Her daughter Anne (Caren Pistorius) is on the verge of moving to Sweden to make a life with a surfer she met via the internet. By way of contrast, Arnold seems to be constantly under pressure from his two daughters who we never see but are constantly making demands of him over the phone.

After much resistance, Arnold is persuaded to come over for a meal and meet Gloria’s family – not only her kids but also her ex-husband. The evening proves too much for Arnold and marks the beginning of the end of his and Gloria’s relationship. Except that, try as she might to cut him off, Arnold doesn’t want it to let her go…

Julianne Moore is on the screen most of the time. Where the original film and Paulina Garcia’s seemingly effortless performance in it felt like a welcome breath of fresh air, however, if you’ve seen the original, this one feels like a pointless retread with Moore failing to add that certain something that Garcia brought. Which is a pity, because on paper this remake sounded like it might be really quite something.

Gloria Bell is out in the UK on Friday, June 7th. Watch the film trailer below:

And here, for comparison, is the trailer for the original 2013 Chilean film Gloria:

A Fantastic Woman (Una Mujer Fantástica)

Posted on by victorfraga

Marina Vidal (Daniela Vega) is simply a woman. And she happens to be transsexual. The only way she ascertains her gender is by living her life like any other woman would: she works in a restaurant, she has a partner and she also has a hobby: she sings (extremely well). There’s nothing unusual about her lifestyle. The fact that her gender identity is not aligned with her biological sex neither defines nor limits her life. There is no gender “dysphoria”, as the medical establishment puts it. Marina is just another human being living in Santiago, the capital of Chile.

Marina is infatuated with 57-year-old cisgender Orlando (Francisco Reyes). It’s not entirely clear how they met; the film suggests that this may have happened during one of her performances as a singer, but this is never confirmed. What is unquestionable is that they have a tender and genuine bond, and they love each other. Marina slowly begins to move into Orlando’s upper class flat, and they are planning a romantic trip to the Iguazu Falls. Until disaster strikes: Orlando feels dizzy and has a very unfortunate accident. Marina rushes him to hospital but it’s too late.

The fatality forces Marina to confront the police, Orlando’s ex-wife Sonia and children. She has prove her innocence, and she also has to arrange the handover of the car and the flat in which she has just settled. And there’s also the funeral: Sonia and her son Bruno adamant that she should not attend the event. At first they are friendly, but the thin veneer of cordiality is soon scratched to reveal deeply ingrained prejudice. The only exception is Orlando’s brother Gabo, who seems genuinely caring and tolerant of Marina – maybe because he was close enough to his sibling to know how profound and genuine the relationship wass

Marina is often laconic and stoic. Her piercing gaze says far more than the frugal amount of words coming out of her mouth. Her unapologetic and determined attitude is sometimes mistaken for deceit, but Marina is as integral and honest as one can be. Yet Orlando’s family and the establishment try to humiliate, to disarm and literally to disrobe Marina. They address her with an inconvenient “he” and even with her birth name “Daniel”, they make ugly faces of disapproval, they taunt her. Sonia dubs her “a chimera”, a fire-breathing female monstrosity from Greek mithology (with a lion’s head, a goat’s body and a serpenet’s tail).

But that’s just the beginning, and she soon realises that the ordeal could escalate much further. Her eventual presence at the funeral (in front of Orlando’s child descendants) could represent the ultimate transgression for a society liberal on the surface but still grappling furiously with bigotry.

Argentinian-born filmmaker Sebastián Lelio created a film that’s both realistic and respectful of transsexual women. He opted for a real transsexual actor and a real singer, shunning the morally questionable practices of transface and ghost-singing. Daniela Vega is an outstanding talent and a much needed voice in the trans community. Both her eyes and her warble will go straight into your heart.

It’s also remarkable that Daniela does not have the “perfect” curvaceous and feminine body. Her breasts are small, her shoulders and her waist are broad, hinting that one day she was a person of the opposite sex. This does not diminish her. She is not embarrassed or her physique in any way. She’s is a transwoman in all of her magnificence. There’s no gender dysphoria. Only euphoria. The film never reveals whether she has had a phalloplasty. “You don’t ask these questions”, Marina explains. Such curiosity is obtuse and intrusive, something the filmmaker Lelio isn’t.

The film is dotted with emotional allegories, and two of those deserve a special mention. Firstly, the moment is walking against the wind with a flurry of leaves preventing her from moving on. Secondly, when Marina is lying naked in bed with a mirror covering her genitalia, her face reflected on it. I think you can work out what they mean!

A Fantastic Woman is showing as part of the BFI London Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. The film was produced by Pablo Larraín, one of the most creative and prolific filmmakers in South America at present. It is out in cinemas on Friday, March 2nd. On VoD in 2019 on various platforms, including BFI Player and Amazon Prime. On Mubi on Saturday, July 4th (2022).