One Good Film (While It Lasts): "Lingua Franca"
Isabel Sandoval's groundbreaking 2019 drama is about to disappear from Netflix.
A regular feature for paid Watch List subscribers: I suggest one reasonably under-the-radar movie from the recent or distant past, and you do what you want with that information.
Lingua Franca (2019, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐, streaming on Netflix, Tubi) – Transgender actress Isabel Sandoval (above) is a quietly charismatic triple threat as the writer-director-star of this drama set in the Russian enclave of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Sandoval plays Olivia, an undocumented Filipina immigrant caring for the elderly Olga (Lynn Cohen) and attracted against her better instincts to Olga’s grandson Alex (Eamon Farren), a kindhearted screw-up trying to stay sober and put his life back on track. Trump is president, ICE is on every street corner, and Alex’s thuggish friends would not react well if they knew Olivia was a “tranny,” but within this fraught jungle, the two carve out a relationship that is both tender and appealingly erotic. Despite the sometimes leaden dialogue, the movie tackles various hot-button issues with subtlety and humanity; Sandoval’s lived experience (and that of her co-star Ivory Aquino, like the director a transgender actress from the Philippines) provides the kind of details, emotional and otherwise, that fill the corners of the story with an almost documentary honesty. Even with an ending that isn’t so much ambiguous as undercooked, it’s a lovely film. You should see it – while you can.
One reason I’m spotlighting “Lingua Franca” is that it’s scheduled to leave Netflix this summer, perhaps as early as the end of this month, after which it will only be available on the ad-supported service Tubi. Once it leaves Tubi, it will be gone – a disappeared film – because like most titles distributed by Netflix, Amazon, and other streamers, no DVD or Blu-ray edition exists. For the purposes of illustration, let this one movie stand in for all the films and TV series that are vanishing as the VOD universe constricts and streamers like Disney+/Hulu and Max pull titles in the name of tax write-offs. (If you want a long explainer of the hole the VOD industry has dug for itself, this recent and damning Vulture story should help.) For the people who make these movies and shows, it’s a frustrating development – months, even years of creative work and no one can see the results – and for cultural historians it’s practically a crime. For audiences, it’s simply a loss and a return to the bad old days before television, when a movie would be junked after it had finished its theatrical run. “Lingua Franca” broke down barriers in 2019 as the first movie by a trans woman of color to premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Now it’s being sent back to the shadows.
I hope you enjoy the movie. Don’t hesitate to weigh in with thoughts.
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