Marina is first seen on a romantic dinner date with Orlando. They drink and eat, dance, stumble home together, make love. Orlando is much older than Marina, and clearly wealthy (he owns a textile mill), whereas Marina waits tables and pursues a singing career. But then Orlando suffers an aneurysm and dies on the operating table after a panicked Marina drives him to the emergency room. It is there her trouble begins. She is treated with suspicion by hospital staff. She is referred to as "he" because her license hasn't been changed to reflect her gender identity. The cops arrive to question her. Orlando had bruises on his body after falling down the stairs during the aneurysm, and there is suspicion of foul play. Marina is asked if Orlando was paying her for sex. She is not granted the respect a grieving wife or girlfriend would receive. She is instantly thrust out of the warm circle of belonging which Orlando represented for her.

Orlando's ex-wife and son (Nicolás Saavedra) want Marina out of Orlando's apartment. She is forbidden to come to the wake or funeral. She is not allowed to keep Orlando's dog. Meanwhile, a detective from the Sexual Offenses Unit (Amparo Noguera) visits Marina at work to ask more questions. She forces Marina to come to the station and submit to a humiliating physical examination. All Marina wants to do is be allowed to say goodbye to Orlando, to grieve publicly. She's not just treated as a second-class citizen. She's treated as a non-Person.

Lelio approaches this material with sensitivity and empathy. There's restraint in his style, eloquent as it is. He weaves in elements from melodrama, from noir. Marina discovers a mysterious key in Orlando's possessions, and her quest to discover what the key might unlock, makes up a large sequence of the film. "A Fantastic Woman" is filled with color, lights shifting from red to green to blue to yellow, bodies bathing in light, drowning in shadows. It's an amorphous world, the borderline between night and day, consciousness and unconsciousness, is blurred. Cinematographer Benjamín Echazarreta has placed Vega at the center of every frame, her face, the back of her neck, her full body. She walks the streets of Santiago. Sometimes she is viewed from behind, sometimes she is viewed from across the street, the camera moving with her as she walks past a construction site, or along a block of storefronts. She is usually alone in the frame. Santiago often appears emptied-out of people in "A Fantastic Woman." These choices suggest Marina's isolation, as well as her vulnerable visibility. It's like she's a walking target.

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