Queen Raquela's plotty elements don't always work: The acting in the story-driving scenes sometimes comes off as amateurish, and the circumstances that send Rios halfway around the world seem contrived. But de Fleur gets an astonishingly good performance from Stefan C. Schaefer.

The great strength of the film is that it is difficult to know where cinema verite leaves off and fiction begins.

Likeable if rambling first feature by Icelandic helmer Olaf de Fleur Johannesson ("Africa United") evinces the helmer's background in documaking, and reps a kind of quasi-doc itself with real-life trannies riffing on their own personas.

Their film is a rarity in that Rios emerges as a vibrant, reflective woman, an individual who refuses to be defined by her transsexuality.

Rios is the glue that holds Johannesson's neither-fish-nor-fowl film together.

Mildly engrossing, building to a final-act clash between First and Third worlds that is riveting and highly uncomfortable to watch.