Movie Review - Lingua Franca (2020)

If you've seen Sam Feder's documentary Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen (2020), then you know that Hollywood has done poorly in portraying transgender characters in film. Even when Hollywood productions do a half-way decent job of portraying transgender people, often those roles aren't inhabited by actors who are transgender in real-life. Rain Valdez is a transgender actress-turned-writer-producer who was nominated for an Emmy for her web series Razor Tongue, a series she created because Hollywood often won't give transgender people the same opportunities or options to expand and do more. Isabel Sandoval similarly to Valdez decided to be the writer, director, producer and star of her features because Hollywood wasn't going to hand her any of it.

Here, Sandoval plays Olivia, a transgender woman who is an immigrant from the Philippines. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, working as an in-home caregiver for an elderly woman of Russian heritage named Olga who is perhaps suffering from early Alzheimer's. Since the election of President Donald Trump, she's worried that she's going to be deported. She wants to gain citizenship, but it seems like her time is running out. Her best chance is to do what a couple of transgender immigrant friends have done, which is have a green card marriage.

Eamon Farren (The Witcher and Twin Peaks) co-stars as Alex, the grandson of Olga. He comes to live with Olga, along side Olivia too. He's a bit of the black sheep of the family, mainly because he got into legal trouble, resulting from a drunk driving incident. His uncle has given him a job at a meat processing or meat packing plant as basically a butcher. Once he's back, he immediately hangs out in bars and it doesn't take long for his friends to pressure him into drinking alcohol again. His grandmother also suggests he's a bit of ladies man. However, he seems to dream of having his own family, married and with four children, two boys and two girls.

Olivia has an erotic dream about Alex, which suggests she has an attraction to him. She tells him about her immigration situation and her plan to get a green card marriage. She never actually proposes or asks him to help her in that regard. Yet, eventually he does ask her to marry him, but his courtship and romance with her feels very rushed in a way that isn't contextualized. People rush into romance and even marriage very quickly, which is the case here. This is fine, but a few of the complications are skirted over.

P.J. Boudousqué (American Horror Story and Coldwater) plays Andrei, the best friend to Alex. He's the one who discovers that Olivia is transgender and tells Alex. Alex doesn't realize that Olivia is transgender despite having had sex with her. Olivia has obviously fully transitioned, having had gender confirmation surgery, which is enough to fool the average man, presumably because Alex is completely unaware until Andrei tells him and proves it by showing him Olivia's passport that has a picture of her before transitioning and lists her dead name. Yet, it's a complication that is skirted over, for good and for worse. For Olivia, sex as a woman isn't a problem, but, given that Alex makes such a big deal about having four children, his sex with her isn't really examined, opposite that.

The film is definitely a glimpse into the lives of two struggling people in New York that feels authentic and genuine. I would probably stress that it is a glimpse, one that shifts more toward Alex's point-of-view. Yet, with him, the thread is a bit lost as well. Alex's friend, Andrei comes across as transphobic. Clearly, Alex is not, but it's never resolved if he maintains that friendship or pushes back against Andrei. Ultimately, Olivia has to decide whether or not she'll marry Alex. The choice that she makes though feels vague in that it's never clear if she is really in love with Alex. Therefore, we're not sure by the end if her choice is due to her feelings for him or the lack thereof. We see what the choice is but not necessarily why. One can make assumptions, but this isn't a Charlie Kaufman or Christopher Nolan film. I was unmoved by the vagueness here.

Rated TV-MA.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 34 mins.

Available on Netflix.