By Suzanne Hunt
A roll of sellotape is the humble prop that makes for a pivotal and deeply disturbing scene in Chilean director Sebastian Lelio's Oscar-winning A Fantastic Woman.
Transgender woman Marina, her grief raw after the sudden death of her loving partner Orlando, is bundled into the back of a car by his thuggish son Bruno and brittle ex-wife Sonia and her face bound up by the offending tape.
So enraged and confused are the family by who, or what, Marina is, they resort to this brutal act before ejecting her onto the unforgiving streets of Santiago.
There, humiliated and hurting, she lurches towards a car window to view her distorted features and to discover, not for the first time or the last, how others perceive her.
That this is dispassionately carried out by Marina, played throughout with heart-stopping dignity and restraint by transgender actor Daniela Vega, makes it all the more effective.
Reflections, in mirrors, shop fronts, sunglasses - and in a hand mirror a naked Marina places over her genitals into which she looks searchingly - provide so many ways of seeing in this excellent portrayal, which won the Academy Award this year for Best Foreign Film, of what it is to be an outsider in today's often intolerant society where compassion seems in short supply.
Almost everyone she encounters in the days after the death of Orlando (Francisco Reyes) tries to impose their own vision of her onto her, not taking into account her feelings at all, or even treating her as a person, irrespective of gender.
"When I see you I don't know what I'm seeing. I see an illusion, that's all," says Sonia as she takes back Orlando's car from Marina.
"I don't get what you are," says Bruno, as he demands back the keys to his father's apartment, Marina's home. "Incredible, my dad was crazy."
Investigating police officers assume sexual perversion between the couple as the cause of Orlando's death, and Marina is mortified to have to strip off and be photographed as a possible suspect.
Her new femininity is everything to her, and she dresses with care and style, her heart-shaped face with its translucent skin, strong brows and glossy, gender-defying hair, filling every frame, yet she has to fight every inch of the way for this right.
It is no wonder she garners some strength to face each demanding and exhausting day by hitting a punch ball before she goes out, in a nod to her former masculinity.
When she does strike back in the face of incredible hostility, it is with calmness and moral correctness on her side. "It was a normal relationship between two assenting adults," she tells the commissioner of sexual offences. "I am the same as you," she says to an incredulous Bruno.
We follow her daily struggles with Lelio's camera often fixed behind her as she walks the city incessantly trying to work out her way forward. A surreal moment on the sidewalk sees her pressing on with all her might against a sudden gale.
As she battles for her right to grieve and to say a proper goodbye to her lover, who comes back from the dead to look at her as no-one else does, with empathy and acceptance, at moments when she needs him most, she gathers increasing strength and purpose.
A very moving sauna scene, in which she strips, echoes the police station humiliation, but this time it is on her own terms and to seek answers.
And when the aggressive family return in their car, she is ready. If they continue to view her as a creature in a safari park, she will act as one and jump on top of their vehicle, looking in on them as they are looking out to her.
Defined not by gender but ultimately by courage and empowerment, Marina, after that sellotape scene, wanders, dishevelled, into a backstreet nightclub.
And she turns what could have been a dehumanising and dispiriting experience into a transformative one - decked out with sparkling tinsel and dancing jubilantly with her fellow revellers - she rises up like a superheroine.
A fantastical woman, and a fantastic one.
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