THE MYSTERIOUS GAZE OF THE FLAMINGO Review: Period Drama Doubles as a Call For Radical Empathy

In the Chile of Augusto Pinochet’s fascist dictatorship (1973-1990), dissent or difference didn’t exist — or rather, if it existed, it went underground — leaving marginalized communities, unprotected by law, social customs, or cultural norms.

 

To dissent, in action, thought, or simply being, was to invite the unwanted attention of Pinochet’s surveillance state and leave yourself vulnerable to kidnapping, detention, and/or worse. 

 

For the queer community in Diego Céspedes’s promising feature-length debut, The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo (Orig. La misteriosa mirada del flamenco), however, disappearing into the slowly dying mining towns of Northern Chile gives them a set of freedoms, of thought, of movement, of action otherwise unavailable to their big-city sisters and brothers. But those freedoms don’t extend beyond their shared living space, a cafe-cabaret, or the local watering hole where, from time to time, they go swimming, even as the local boys, transphobic to their cores, hurl verbal insults in their general direction and willfully mistreat Lidia (Tamara Cortés), the sensitive, observant 12-year-old daughter of Flamingo (Matías Catalán), the star-performer of Mama Boa’s (Paula Dinamarca) nightly cabaret performances. 

 

Adopted by Flamingo and the trans women who live and work in Mama Boa’s establishment, Lidia sees all, hears all, but only partially comprehends the circumstances that led to the formation of Mama Boa’s community or the mostly mute men who provide the cafe-cabaret with a disinterested audience and the working capital to provide the trans performers with food, electricity, and a roof over their heads. There’s also a mix of interest, ignorance, and bigotry in the men’s lingering gazes, given all the more import as the trans women and their lovers begin to suffer from a newly discovered disease (early-stage AIDS), draped in rumor, misinformation, and disinformation. 

 

Céspedes makes much of the gaze, both the cinematic one discussed in college film courses and a literal one exchanged between the trans women and the miners. The miners become fixated on the idea that the disease can be transferred by a single glance, leading to a series of slightly comical moments that inevitably turn grimly dark when the miners force the trans women to wear blindfolds. It does nothing, of course, to curtail their desire, only mask it through plausible deniability. 

 

Just as unspoken desire lingers between the trans women and the miners who frequent the cafe-cabaret, so too does the threat of transphobic violence. Flamingo’s onetime lover, Yovani (Pedro Muñoz), appears unexpectedly at the cafe-cabaret, brandishing a firearm, and begging Flamingo to cure him of the persistent cough — and all the cough implies — as if Flamingo has any power over the terminal disease that will eventually take her life before she’s old enough to experience a mid-life crisis.

 

Céspedes offers another, more optimistic portrayal of the relationship between Mama Boa and an older miner, Clemente (Luis Tato Dubó). In their respective middle ages, they’re not so much burdened by disappointment and regret as grudgingly reconciling themselves to them. Far from cities, conflict, and political repression, they find comfort in a mutual reciprocity born out of hard-won experience, respect, and the inherent desire for human companionship. 

 

The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo takes a not unexpected turn into the violence teased in the earlier encounters between the trans women and the miners, sending the narrative in an entirely different direction, one where Lidia, the film’s watchful, pensive viewpoint character, sheds what’s left of her innocence to pursue a path laden with physical and spiritual risk, one where only wisdom can only come from direct experience and not the advice, however helpful, of the queer community’s elders. 

 

Despite the threat of neo-Western violence erupting into the frame at practically any moment, Céspedes prefers to take a more nuanced approach to the central conflict, one where our initial sympathies understandably lie with the trans women and their plight, but also one where those sympathies grow in concentric circles, eventually absorbing the recalcitrant miners and their loose-knit, barely organized community. 

 

It’s to Céspedes’s considerable credit that The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo doesn’t turn on violence, however satisfying or cathartic, but on an act of radical empathy, one where one character’s humanity doesn’t cancel the other’s; instead, it complements it. 

 

Chile’s official entry for the 2025 Academy Awards, The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where it received the Un Certain Regard Award. It’s currently in limited release in North American arthouse theaters, via Altered Innocence. Visit their official site for more information, including locations and playdates. It is also available to rent for a limited time via Letterboxd's Video Store.