On Netflix, I watched the 2020 film Lingua Franca, directed by Isabel Sandoval. It was a really moving and quiet indie drama about a Filipina transwoman named Olivia (Sandoval) living as an undocumented immigrant in New York City. She’s caught in a bind between trying to get a green card through a sham marriage, her passport having her deadname on it, and being unable to change it without authorities being alerted to her status. She works as a live-in nurse for an elderly Russian Jewish woman (Lynn Cohen, in one of her last roles) and she and the woman’s grandson (Eamon Farren) slowly develop a romantic relationship together.
I loved how this film spoke in quiet expressions, subtle movements, and how, like the A.V. Club review stated, her story as a transwoman and immigrant has already passed, and it’s just about her trying to get by in the present and keep her head down. As quoted from the review, “Lingua Franca is not a transition story, nor is it a story about migration. For Olivia, both of those events, seismic as they may have been, are in the past. She made it to the place and became the person she needed to be, but lost herself amid all the sacrifices she had to make to get there. Sometimes revolutions are loud, dramatic affairs. For Olivia, just allowing herself to love, to be loved, and to love herself is enough.”
The film uses news clips of 45 making threatening statements about undocumented immigrants as background noise, as well as news reports about violence against transwomen as another creeping threat.
She has a close bond with a childhood friend, Trixie, who is also a transwoman living in NYC, and they have some sweet scenes together sitting in empty church pews, speaking in Tagalog and reminiscing about their Catholic school days, when they identified more with the nuns than any male religious figures.
I’m happy that the A.V. Club recommended this film, it’s truly a hidden gem, and was touching to watch.
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