With her 3rd film, Brooklyn Secret , Isabel Sandoval is interested in the journey of a Filipina who is trying to find her place in the United States and more generally in the world. The quest for paper is followed by a quest for identity that is never revengeful and of very fine subtlety.

A fantastic woman

As Chris refused to give his dead name in Work in progress, Olivia remains discreet about her transition. Trans and undocumented woman in a country led by Trump, she doesn’t make too much noise. This is why she performs her home help tasks with Olga, an elderly woman who is losing her head a little. We will know very little about the inner life of this old lady who hires other undocumented women at her bedside. At the same time, Olivia is looking to get married, not to find love but to obtain these famous papers because there are many “roundups” in the country and Olivia lives more or less in fear. A fear that will become more and more significant. She is not serene but her righteousness lets nothing show it. She is not cutesy either. It is a character who advances straight ahead without turning around.When she crosses paths with Olga’s grandson, she falls into reverie. That of sincere love finally possible. She will throw herself headlong into it.

Painting and cinema

Isabel Sandoval describes the everyday life of this woman in small subtle, almost impressionist touches, and reveals a strange poetry. By focusing on the details or the bodies, she gives life to this invisible little world without however militating by clubbing her ideas. Indeed the speech which is held in the film, the dialogues, nothing is hammered, everything is almost whispered in the ear of the spectator. At several points in the film, we think of A Fantastic Woman and her portrait never portrayed of a trans woman.
As Sebastian Leilo spoke of love without ever showing the sex of his heroine, here Isabel Sandoval surrounds her heroine and offers a study of this body in search of a place in the world in its desires but without ever freezing it. We are entitled to very beautiful scenes between the two lovers who are very gentle as if to better reveal the violence that is written in hollow . Isabel Sandoval also films the city that surrounds its history, the landscapes and makes the environment the capacity to make poetic everyday life less prosaic.

Internal tension

Softness and strength emanate from this magnificent portrait and by small impressionist, light touches. Isabel Sandoval builds through her films portraits of multiple women whom she surrounds with both the violence of the world and the sweetness of her creative gesture :“I always come back to the same themes and among these, the feminine. I am interested in women who are marginalized and who have to make difficult personal decisions in a tense social and political context (…) I wanted my film to be atmospheric and dark because in the silences lodges the emotion of the film. Particularly at the end. I wanted to create tension inside scenes where apparently nothing much happened. I leave space for my characters so that their emotions can arise in real time ” (extract from the film’s press kit). The director impresses by the mastery of her work at the same time director, actress and editor , she is of all positions like a Xavier Dolanfeminine. Hopefully his cinema will be more widely distributed in France… For the moment, we are not able to know if his latest film will be released on our screens, or when. Risk of traffic jams requires the reopening of cinemas in France.