Emilia Pérez (2024)
SHOULD I SEE IT?
YES
One of the boldest films of the year, you have truly never seen anything quite like Emilia Pérez.
Though all the performances are good to great, evidenced by the four women in the film sharing the Best Actress prize at Cannes, the fantastic performance from Zoe Saldaña is one of the year’s best.
Hard to categorize, this is, at once, a suspense/thriller, crime drama, and musical, made in France, set partially in Mexico, performed almost entirely in Spanish. I mean, that alone…
NO
Written and directed by Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez takes big swings and misses more than it hits.
The film, for all the accolades it has earned, feels at times much more regressive than progressive in its representation.
I appreciate this movie exists. I can even applaud Netflix for putting so much investment and support behind it. I want to believe in it. Perhaps a second viewing will change my mind. In the moment however, watching it the first time often rubbed me the wrong way. A film that felt like it plays a bit too reckless with the very representation it tries to celebrate.
OUR REVIEW
No one can watch Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pėrez and not admire, on one hand, the big swings it takes. A French-made film, largely in Spanish, with big musical numbers and a story of a transgender woman trying to finally live an authentic life is a lot to fit under one movie’s tent. And yet, Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone), ever the ambitious storyteller, tries his best to find space for all these components to share equal space.
Earmarked as a major awards season contender, this is a film truly unlike any other. We meet Rita (Zoe Saldaña), a criminal defense lawyer who seemingly never sleeps, having just succeeded in helping a high-profile murder suspect be found innocent following the death of his wife. By the time we learn she mounted a defense that the wife died by suicide, we are two songs into the film as Rita wrestles with her conscience while performing a broadway musical-style song-and-dance through the streets of Mexico.
I’ll admit, Emilia Pėrez is a captivating watch from the opening bell. The film has a style and flair unique to the Mexico that Audiard is sharing with us. Street vendors, all night dance parties, wi-fi available next to food trucks - Rita is immersed in a world that never stops making noise.
Kidnapped and forced to meet a mysterious individual named Manitas, Rita soon learns that she is sitting in front of a feared drug lord. The leader of the most feared cartel in the region, Manitas wants to disappear. Having seen Rita’s recent court success, she is offered substantial money to help Manitas undergo gender-affirming surgery. By revealing that she is transgender, Manitas hopes to fake death, transition, and begin a new life away from all the crime and chaos that envelopes her.
Emilia (and Manitas) is played by Karla Sofía Gascón, a breakout leading role for transgender representation. For American viewers, she may be new, but Gascón is well known in her native Spain. Audiard’s cinematographer, Paul Guilhaume, frames much of the film’s opening scenes in darkness, with stabs of light used to illuminate specific areas of focus. When we first meet Manitas, we are framed in a tight close up, as if the face is something shameful to look at. Later, when Rita arranges for Emilia’s surgery in Thailand, a wild, Busby Berkeley-themed musical number blasts to life. We wheel around an operating room, with harsh surgical lights and bright white walls all around us, as doctors, nurses, and medical technicians all sing a song about the different “-plasty” procedures Emilia will receive.
Moments like that song, not-so-subtly named “La Vaginoplastia,” shift tone so dramatically that, as a viewer, we are caught between trying to determine whether we should be laughing or taking the film more seriously. The misgendering during these moments certainly does not help matters. And admittedly, from that moment on, the novelty of Emilia Perez started to disappear and for the duration of its 132 minutes, Audiard gives us a strange, complicated beast of a film.
As more characters enter the fray, Selena Gomez plays Jessi, Manitas’ wife and mother to their children. As the movie hurdles ahead four years, Emilia has her new life, in London, leading a non-profit organization with Rita’s support that helps find and identify missing family members. Jessi is contacted by Rita to bring her children to London and meet Emilia, introduced as Manitas’ long-lost cousin. Emilia has agreed to help Jessi raise her children if they relocate.
The deeper we get into the film, the more convoluted and problematic it becomes. Audiard seems to not have a real grasp on the optics of what he is presenting on screen. His screenplay, adapted from a previously written opera of his, stumbles around rather recklessly.
Emilia undergoes all her surgeries at one time. When angry, she lowers her voice and exhibits violent tendencies from her past - furthering a dangerous, regressive narrative that feeds into a bigotry transgender individuals face through every step of their life. Certainly, I don’t believe Audiard intends for his film to feed into the dangerous rhetoric used to ignite a pointless culture war raging in our world right now. But what are we to make of a film that seems comfortable in showing Emilia as female, but only “some” of the time?
Even more frustrating is that the film’s misguided moments drown out powerful ones. Gascón’s song about coming to terms with her gender identity is heartfelt and genuinely moving. A song exchange between Emilia and her young son, where he confessing to missing his father and can smell him when he hugs Emilia is the type of song that could work well within the complexities of the story being told. Then, minutes later, Emilia engages in an act of aggression that undoes any tenderness Audiard hoped to embrace. Instead, we find ourselves tossed back into messy, pulpy melodrama that undercuts any empathy or understanding Audiard seeks to gain from his audience.
The four core performances are strong. Saldaña is really the lead here and has never been better. Gascón is bold, fearless even, and exceptionally talented in navigating the rollercoaster ride Audiard puts her character through. Gomez is quietly effective, her A-list celebrity status falling away early on to make us believe in a character who is simply trying to find ways to survive a life she never envisioned for herself.
Adriana Paz joins the story, in a small role, as a woman who builds a special connection to Emilia after Emilia’s organization helps her deal with a tragedy. Notably, all four women shared the Best Actress prize at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, so it really is a shame that the film cannot avoid rushing headlong into an otherness component that Audiard likely should have been more mindful in recognizing.
However, with all the musical numbers, increasingly somber and melancholy as the film moves forward, and the attempted exploration of gender, identity, and the complexities that come with resilience and self-discovery, Emilia Perez falters significantly when it needs to speak clearly and most powerfully.
We can recognize Audiard’s ambition and praise the impressive acting performances, sound design, editing, choreography, and cinematography. At the same time, we can also acknowledge that overall the movie falls flat and feels uncomfortable at times and rather problematic. Both things can be true. What a missed opportunity.
CAST & CREW
Starring: Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, Edgar Ramírez, Mark Ivanir, Eduardo Aladro
Director: Jacques Audiard
Written by: Jacques Audiard, in collaboration with Thomas Bidegain, Nicolas Livecchi, Léa Mysius
Based on the opera libretto “Emilia Perez” by Jacques Audiard
Adapted from elements of the novel “Écoute” by Boris Razon
Release Date: November 1, 2024
Netflix