Lingua Franca Subverts Norms With Deeply Human Filmmaking

For the first time since 1974, a Summer moviegoing season was not populated with a barrage of big blockbusters. With no new Transformers, Marvel Studios or Harry Potter movies defining the Summer 2020 season, maybe we can all collectively agree to remember Summer 2020 as the summer of good indie cinema? Let the likes of Shirley, Miss Juneteenth and She Dies Tomorrow be the films we associated with this particular summer moviegoing session. Let’s also toss in Lingua Franca into that category of defining Summer 2020 cinema. The directorial debut of Isabel Sandoval, Lingua Franca would be well worth remembering no matter what season it was released in.

Sandoval also stars in Lingua Franca as Olivia, an undocumented trans-Filipino woman working in New York City in 2020. As you can imagine, everyday life for her isn’t great thanks to the constant looming presence of I.C.E. and her struggles to garner American citizenship. She makes her money working as a caretaker for an elderly woman suffering from a deteriorating mental state named Olga (Lynn Cohen), who just got some company in the form of her grandson, Alex (Lev Gorn). Across all three of these characters is a desire to be seen as a person by other people. Olga, for example, doesn’t want to receive help when she doesn’t need it while Alex is trying to maintain a job after a number of off-screen personal troubles.

Above all, though, this is Olivia’s story. It’s one that Sandoval tells with a welcome variety of filmmaking influences. The opening and closing sequence, depicting Olivia talking to her far-away mother over footage of various parts of NYV, is reminiscent of Chantal Akerman's Notes From Home. Alex, meanwhile, enters the meat factory that he works in through a tracking shot straight out of a Martin Scorsese movie. Then there’s Olivia’s sensual dream sequence where she imagines herself and Alex making love. The otherworldly nature of the visuals, as well as the use of tight close-ups of bodies in the middle of making passionate love, simultaneously evokes the works of David Lynch as well as Hiroshi Teshigahara's The Woman in the Dunes.

The way Lingua Franca evokes classic movies while creating something distinctive is emblematic of how the whole production is aware of the past while blazing new trails. This trait is also reflected in how Lingua Franca quietly subverts storytelling tropes associated with cinematic trans narratives. It’s easy to see a version of Lingua Franca where Alex is our lead character. Perhaps he's now framed as a bigot to make the morality of the story more one-dimensional. Of course, he'll be led down a redemptive arc through taught life lessons by Olivia. In this incarnation of Lingua Franca, Olivia would be exclusively defined by Alex. She’d be a passive figure, one whose entire existence was destined to end in tragedy to motivate personal growth on the part of Alex.

The actual Lingua Franca takes a more thoughtful approach to Olivia’s story, which was also penned by Sandoval. For one thing, the vast majority of the film is filtered through her perspective. Only scenes depicting Alex at his job and at a local tavern deviate from Lingua Franca being told through Olivia’s eyes. For another, even in the face of systemic forces (like I.C.E.) that constrain her, Olivia is still an active character. She’s more than capable of making her own choices, she isn’t just at the mercy of cis-gendered characters. Since the narrative doesn’t default to Olivia always experiencing the most miserable events possible, you really don’t know where she’ll take the story next.

This means Lingua Franca has a sense of tonal variety in depicting the life of a trans character that I can’t even imagine existing in something like Dallas Buyer’s Club. That’s unbelievably good in terms of subverting harmful pop culture stereotypes. However, these deft writing touches on the part of Sandoval ensures that Lingua Franca is immensely engaging as a standalone piece of art. Take a quiet scene between Olivia and her longtime friend reminiscing about their childhood together. The dialogue here, including the great phrase “We were dressed like altar boys when what we really wanted to be were nuns!”, is so gloriously specific. There’s a level of detail to their interaction that makes it feel ripped from reality.

Sandoval’s intimate camerawork is just the cherry on top of such a moving scene. By placing the audience so close to these two characters, as well as having this conversation take place in a nearly-empty locale, there’s a cozy visual quality to their interaction. That quality reinforces the sense that Olivia and her sister, though so often dehumanized in America, find essential comfort in one another’s company. Sandoval’s camerawork throughout the whole production carries a similar quality of being subdued but noteworthy. Especially impressive is the way she incorporates wider angles throughout Lingua Franca to convey a sense of detachment between characters, particularly in regard to Alex and his relatives.

It wouldn’t be inaccurate to call Lingua Franca a movie of the moment. After all, bigotry against trans individuals, people of color and immigrants (which has always existed in this country) are on the forefront of the political zeitgeist right now. Just two days ago, transphobic comments from Cissie Graham at the Republican National Convention reaffirmed prejudice festers in seats of immense power. A deeply human story like Lingua Franca certainly makes for a good balm against such hatred ripped straight from the headlines. However, the best qualities of Lingua Franca are also its most timeless.

Among those qualities is the fact that, like Carol, Tangerine and Rafiki, Lingua Franca is a movie about LGBTQIA+ people living, enduring and even thriving told through the prism of remarkable filmmaking. That’s the sort of feature that ensures we’ll be talking about Lingua Franca long after Summer 2020 has come to a close.

Lingua Franca is now streaming on Netflix.