Vassilis Kroustallis reviews the Argentinian film 'Thesis On A Domestication'.
In one of the early scenes of Thesis on a Domestication by Javier van de Couter, a successful trans actress (Camila Sosa Villada) is being told by the theater guard that she is not allowed to smoke in the building. She defies him, but she still has to leave the building after making a scene. This is the first step to the new heteronrmative world that the main character of the film (based on Camilla Sosa Villada's own novel) is willing to navigate in this classy but disjointed narrative film about the bourgeois trans experience.
The film (produced, among others, by Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal) does not mark the usual trajectory from rags to riches (or, from transphobia to acceptance, for that matter). The main character is already established as a trans personality (she can fill up to 1287 theater seats per night), with her theater director friend becoming her sexual interest. Yet, things change when the actress meets a Mexican queer lawyer (Alfonso Herrera) and they decide to start a family, to the chagrin of her trans friends, who think she has betrayed them.
'Thesis on a Domestication' proceeds cautiously between spacious, empty city apartments in which it seemingly never shines and small, cramped country places, in which the actresses' parents still reside. The narrative fills us with the past dark spots of her past, and a more than compliant mother unveils that her sister became 'a prostitute' after transition.
Sexually liberated and family-oriented are the two sides of the same coin for the character; the film deftly shows that sexual interest does not stop after the wedding and marital duties. The queer couple, unwilling to submit themselves to a sexless marriage, tries all the best it can master to keep their relationship alive. Yet, everything else won't support their vision, including their desire to adopt a boy from a home.
'Thesis on a Domestication' cleverly uses the different contrasts that slowly reveal that even the best shot at a traditional establishment (such as marriage) cannot shake its very conservative underpinnings -and most importantly, other people's expectations. Consequently, both partners in the couple will seek emotional support outside of the marriage itself. The film relies heavily on the actors' involvement with the story (especially Camila Sosa Villada's history) to achieve the impossible angles of the cinematic project. It doesn't always succeed; the boy subplot and his disease are a gentle reminder of the 80s nightmare queer people had to go through -yet here, it only elevates the melodrama aspect, which is not even the film's starting point.
The film feels equally well with crowds (the party juxtaposed with the couple's lovely curio of a wedding), and a two-shot treatment of its leading duo. Sosa Villada's character is finely tuned as both assured and curious, filled with rage and compassion, being in a critical stage of her life. While the film somewhat resists celebrating trans empowerment as a goal in itself (and occasionally undermines it, especially in the relationship between the actress and her theater director), it remains an enjoyable kaleidoscope of queer feelings in a modern world that still struggles to accommodate its queer characters.
Thesis on A Domestication screened at the 2025 Queer Lisboa Film Festival.
