By Susan Granger
Special to WestportNow
Filmmaker Sebastian Lelio sensitively examines the emotional stigma of transgender in “A Fantastic Woman,” his Oscar-winning Chilean film.
In Santiago, Martina Vidal (Daniela Vega) and Orlando Onetto (Francisco Reyes) are in love. She’s a young waitress/cabaret singer; he’s 20 years older, the owner of a printing company.
After celebrating Martina’s birthday one evening, Orlando becomes ill, suffering a fatal aneurysm. Martina rushes him to the emergency room, but he dies on the operating table.
Suddenly, grieving Martina is viewed with distrust because of her sexual identity. To the hospital staff and police, she’s a suspicious person. To Orlando’s family, she’s perverted because she’s a trans woman.
A detective (Amparo Noguera) visits Martina at the restaurant where she works, explaining that she’s from the sexual offenses unit. “Was he paying you?” she asks.
“We were a couple,” Martina answers truthfully, adding, “It was a healthy, consensual relationship between two adults.”
As bitter conflict erupts, she is forbidden to attend his funeral, and Orlando’s son (Niccolas Saavedra) threatens to evict her from the flat she shared with his father. At issue is the fact that Martina is still considered, legally, a man.
Perhaps Orlando’s estranged wife (Aline Kuppenheim) best epitomizes our patriarchal society’s ignorance and confusion, noting, “When I look at you, I don’t know what I’m seeing.”
Daniela Vega delivers an anguished, transcendent performance. Hired by Sebastian Lelio (“Gloria”) as a LGBTQ “cultural consultant,” she convinced him he needed a transgender actor.
“Her uniqueness pushed the script further,” Lelio clarifies. “I was trying to make the script to be as complex as she was.”
As it turns out, Daniela Vega is the first transgender protagonist, propelling Chile’s first-ever Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “A Fantastic Woman” is an empathetic, ethically compelling 8, tender and well-timed.
You can’t blame Swedish actress Alicia Vikander (“Ex Machina,” “Tulip Fever,” “The Danish Girl”) for the inconsistencies of “Tomb Raider,” the cinematic reboot of the popular video game. As a petite Lara Croft, she’s feisty and fit-as-a-fiddle.
After proving her endurance in a grueling bike race through London, Lara remains unwilling to concede that her globe-hopping industrialist/explorer father, Lord Richard Croft (Dominic West), is dead, although he disappeared seven years earlier and hasn’t been heard from since.
Discovering her father’s obsession with the tomb of Japan’s evil Queen Himiko, buried alive 2,000 years ago, Lara takes off for Hong Kong, where she commandeers a boat that belongs to Lu Ren (Daniel Wu), whose father sailed with her father to the mysterious island of Yamatai.
Shipwrecked as they approach Yamatai, Lara and Lu Ren are captured by mercenary Matthias Vogel (Walter Groggins), who is also searching for the tomb. His job is to excavate the site and disinter Queen Himiko, despite repeated warnings from Richard Croft and, later, Lara.
As Lara’s adventure continues, the melodramatic cliffhangers resemble the Perils of Pauline.
Inconsistently, often nonsensically scripted, it’s helmed by Norwegian director Roar Uthaug, who scores with CG action pieces, like showing tenacious Lara swept away by a raging river and entrapped in the rusted cockpit of crashed plane that’s dangling over a waterfall.
Kristin Scott Thomas and Derek Jacobi appear far too briefly, primarily to set up a sequel.
On the Granger Gauge, “Tomb Raider” is a sprawling 6, as the franchise continues.
For many years, “A Wrinkle in Time,” Madeleine L’Engle beloved 1962 sci-fi fantasy, was considered unfilmable, steeped in religious and spiritual concepts.
Nevertheless, Disney backed director Ava DuVernay (“Selma,” “13th”) on this $100 million-plus project, featuring rebellious Meg Murry (Storm Reid), a biracial teenager whose adolescent angst is augmented by the disappearance of her physicist father, Dr. Alex Murry (Chris Pine).
“Most days I hate myself,” Meg says, reflecting what most middle-schoolers feel. The underlying goal is for Meg to learn to let go of her emotional baggage and accept herself as she is.
So Meg embarks on a cosmic search for her father who went missing four years ago when he discovered how to travel great distances through space, utilizing something called a tesseract.
Meg is accompanied on this celestial journey by her precocious younger brother, Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe), and her admiring, supportive classmate, Calvin (Levi Miller).
They’re led by three ethereal beings: capricious Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon), quotation-spouting Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling) and colossal, all-powerful Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey with dazzling, rhinestone-studded eyebrows), who urges Meg to “Be a Warrior.”
The first place they visit is verdant Uriel, populated by talking flowers; it’s a favorite of Mrs. Whatsit, who transforms into a green dragonesque creature, taking them on a galactic ride on her cabbage leaflike wings.
Then it’s off through another portal to find Happy Medium (Zach Galifianakis). Eventually, resilient Meg matches wits with The It, a giant, disembodied brain (voiced by David Oyelowo).
Adapted by Jennifer Lee and Jeff Stockwell, it’s loaded with bold feminism and multi-racial/multi-culturalism. But it’s also burdened by a diffuse, often confusing storyline and too many garish, overbearing visuals — which quickly become disconcerting.
On the Granger Gauge, “A Wrinkle in Time” is a family-friendly, yet frustrating 5, a psychedelic, self-empowering trip.
(Editor’s Note: Westport resident Susan Granger grew up in Hollywood, studied journalism with Pierre Salinger at Mills College, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism. In addition to writing for newspapers and magazines, she has been on radio/television as an anchorwoman and movie/drama critic for many years. See her reviews at www.susangranger.com.)
