Common Language: Lingua Franca and Auteurship
Written by Lex Young
Photo Credit via Lingua Franca trailer on Youtube
Isabel Sandoval is an auteur who has been creating her own home in cinema. Lingua Franca, which she wrote, directed, edited, starred in and produced, is a film where this control supports its trans identity and immigration themes. Each character is in conversation with their autonomy, home, and family. The control Sandoval exhibits over the film and its narrative is empowering, solidifying her importance in modern cinema and the vital need for trans folks and immigrants to have authorship over their narrative in cinema and life.
In Lingua Franca, each character grapples with control. The film begins with Olga, an elderly Russian immigrant who struggles with her memory. We see her in a kitchen, reminiscent of Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, women who meander through routine, domestic ritual, finding comfort in this routine, but not happiness, a forced expectation of femininity. Odes to Akerman can be seen throughout the lonely landscapes of New York beautifully captured by Sandoval. This is a marker of Akerman’s cinema as well, emphasizing a separation between self, identity and place. Two women who are looking for themselves in a vast and crowded city, a struggle to find home.
The character of Olivia, played by Sandoval herself, is bound in constraints of care, a duty to her family, her job as a caretaker for Olga, and someone she paid to marry her for a green card. Throughout the film, she speaks with a faceless mother, whose voice we only hear through the phone, and she is seen preparing care packages for her family back in the Philippines. This faceless mother is a striking absence of an image, just a distant voice, emphasizing the separation between two homes and family.
Insecurity can be found in the character of Alex, the grandson of Olga, his own identity wrought with the instabilities of addiction and toxic masculinity. This is shown by Sandoval, through the character of Olivia, displays Alex and his toxicities with an empathy that comes from desire. Sandoval plays with this idea of a savior. Alex is someone who desired Olivia without knowing her fears of deportation, her status as an immigrant, her loss of a green card marriage, and her trans identity. When he does find out it’s through deception and influence from his friends who spew transmisogynist slurs. Sandoval beautifully depicts the ongoing and never ending fight with policy, violence and fear that plague immigrants and trans folk alike.
Lingua Franca ends with Olivia’s rejection of Alex’s marriage proposal, and Olga once again struggling to remember herself and routine. It’s an open ending, not exactly a conclusion but a cycle; we’re empowered all the same with the knowledge of Olivia’s choice of a new beginning. Olivia speaks on the phone to her mother of another job and that she met someone new. Yet we’re left alone with Olga, in her bleak kitchen, wondering about our place in the world. It’s a nod to the continuous journey of finding comfort in one’s own identity, and the continuous struggles of trans folks and immigrants.
Isabel Sandoval highlights the importance of trans folk and immigrants controlling one’s narrative. Her auteurship is vital in her work, and to the empowerment of trans and immigrant voices, a pedestal formed with her own hands.
Lingua Franca
Director: Isabel Sandoval
Year: 2019
Streaming on Netflix
Lex Young is currently watching movies, writing and making things in New York. Catch more of their work on Instagram