Isabel Sandoval: Cinema as Self-Discovery
NetflixTrans representation on screen has been a very delicate subject for many years. There have been some honest attempts at portraying transsexuality in cinema, with films like Boys Don’t Cry, Albert Noobs, and The Danish Girl gathering plenty of acclaim during award season but being seen as misinformative and even downright exploitative by the trans community. A handful of movies have come out however that were accepted by LGBT audiences, for instance Céline Sciamma’s Tomboy, Sean Baker’s Tangerine, and Sebastián Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman. One issue remains: these filmmakers are not trans, further making their voice feel marginalised.
Enter Isabel Sandoval. This Filipina filmmaker has become a bit of a sensation on Twitter, being dubbed “queen of sensual cinema” for her latest two films: Lingua Franca and Shangri-La, streaming on Netflix and MUBI respectively. But her career starts a bit earlier than that. Her first two feature films were made 2011 and 2012, a mere two years before transitioning, and her debut was instrumental in this decision.
Señorita tells the story of Donna, a transgender woman looking to quit sex work, who becomes entangled in a political scandal during the mayor’s election in a small town near Manila, while also looking after the 12-year-old son of a friend of hers. Sandoval not only co-wrote, produced, and directed the film, but she also starred in it as the lead. This was a bold choice that paid off immensely: not only is her performance very moving in how quiet it is, but it helped her discover her own identity, feeling like herself dressing and acting as a woman.
Some of Sandoval’s biggest inspirations are the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wong Kar-wai, and Chantal Akerman. Her passion for the craft is eclectic and inspiring, taking influences from countless classics of American and world cinema, learning everything she knows about filmmaking from what she watched and what she directed. Señorita was a very strong debut in 2011, and Isabel Sandoval’s quest to give voice to the underrepresented led to the historical psychological drama Aparisyon in 2012.
Aparisyon is set in 1971 right before the declaration of martial law by dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. While she did not act this time around, Sandoval did also co-edit this film, and her style evolved dramatically between this feature and her previous one: while Señorita relies a lot on dialogue-driven performances, Aparisyon is much quieter and more lyrical, with lingering silent shots and sparingly used camera movements that hold more weight than any word. It is clear that Sandoval feels a clear attachment to the history of her country and how certain key political actions have brought an immense amount of fear to the common people, making her sophomore effort inherently political, but also deeply religious.
There is something incredibly moving in the way the characters of Isabel Sandoval are spiritual: rather than focusing on the bigotry of certain members of the Catholic faith, she paints belief as pure and helpful for the soul. After all, if Jesus and God are meant to forgive everyone’s sins and have unconditional love towards all those who follow them, it is only right that members of the LGBT+ community can be accepted despite not falling within the heteronormative views of the Church. Doubt in one’s own faith is very common, and the nuns of the convent in Aparisyon go through a nightmarish ordeal that puts them to the test, but thankfully it is their support for one another that leads them away from the darkness and to finding forgiveness and embrace in religion.
Sandoval officially transitioned in 2014, and after a few years of silence, she broke new grounds with what is arguably one of the most important pieces of queer cinema of the 2010s: Lingua Franca. Premiering at the Giornate Degli Autori side section of the 76th Venice Film Festival, making her the first openly trans woman of colour to compete in any category, the film is a potent tale about both trans identity and the immigrant experience in the United States.
A “lingua franca” is a bridge language, used by speakers who do not share the same native language. The film, unlike some of the trans stories cited at the beginning of this article, is set well after the transition of its protagonist, Olivia. The portrayal of the Trump era, with all its idiosyncrasies and contradictions, comes across as more real and fearful than in many other films that have tried before and since: Olivia is working illegally in the country, and her last resort is to obtain a green card through marriage. This leads her to start a relationship with Alex (Eamon Farren, more famous for playing the deranged Richard Horne in Twin Peaks: The Return), a young slaughterhouse worker.
There is a constant feeling of fear and tension throughout the film that could easily lead one to mistaking it for a thriller, but there is so much more under the surface here. The key word to this, but also the rest of Isabel Sandoval’s body of work, is empathy. She does not wallow in misery. Her characters are not weak or lacking drive. She loves them, and likely sees part of herself in them. Lingua Franca is powerful because not only does it show just how tough and downright scary living in America can be as an immigrant, with ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) breathing down their neck, but it also paints a poignant portrait of looking for love and acceptance as a trans person, unsure of how much to disclose knowing that it might lead to rejection or maybe even a violent attack.
The title of “queen of sensual cinema” becomes quite apt with Lingua Franca, as the erotic encounters of Olivia are portrayed in a deeply passionate way, with intense close-ups that feel sweaty and tactile, without explicit shots that could border on the pornographic, and with masterful rhythm in both visuals and editing that is almost intoxicating to watch. The Wong Kar-wai inspiration becomes clear during those moments, as well as the restrained central performance of Sandoval herself, her face holding so many emotions that she is trying to keep hidden, proving once again that sometimes the best acting is the one that holds everything back.
Following the success of Lingua Franca on the festival circuit, it was acquired by Ava Duvernay’s ARRAY distribution company, releasing it on Netflix almost a year after its premiere. Since then, Sandoval has made Shangri-La, short film part of the Miu Miu Women’s Tales project, with a soulful, poetic, and hypnotic tale of forbidden love during the Great Depression (one of the strongest films of the collection). She is currently working on both a feature film, Tropical Gothic, and a one-hour drama for FX, titled Vespertine. Isabel Sandoval has officially come into her own, as an artist, a filmmaker, and as a person, becoming one of the most exciting new voices in cinema, hopefully leading to more marginalised individuals having the opportunity to prove their worth and tell their stories. One can never know how they might affect someone around the world, making them feel seen and accepted. That is the greatest gift of cinema, and that is something that Sandoval understands perfectly.