Emilia Pérez review: Jacques Audiard tosses a musical drama with a Mexican drug dealer undergoing gender-affirming surgery. Too much is an understatement. Who is Emilia Pérez? Jacques Audiard does not want to answer that question so easily. At the end of his latest musical drama (that won two prizes at this year’s Cannes Film Festival), we are still left with the same question. This is a film that is persistent in trying to make a point that Emilia is not to be defined, that her identity exists in many layers and forms. So, in response, Audiard manages to deliver a pastiche of sorts, one that is able to aim for great heights but ultimately crashes due to the weight of its own ambition. It is manipulative, disorienting, ridiculous and silly–no movie this year can elicit a more extreme reaction than what Emilia Pérez does.
Emilia Pérez is a musical, and it begins through the eyes of Rita (Zoe Saldana, easily taking the prize for most acting here), a civil defense attorney who attends a trial, almost disillusioned by the unjust state of affairs. Two silly musical numbers later, she is kidnapped by a powerful drug lord Manitas del Monte (Karla Sofia Gascón). Why? Rita must help Manitas find a doctor who can help her transform into a woman. To not only get her a gender confirmation surgery but also send Jessi, Manitas’ wife played by Selena Gomez and their two kids, to Switzerland, with the lie that Manitas has been killed. The incredulous plot has only begun to take some shape when a most unhinged choice of a musical number appears with several patients break into a song about the amount of surgeries that will be needed. “Vaginoplasty!” “Yes!” they sing.
Manitas transforms into Emilia Pérez, and thanks largely to the strength of Gascon’s kinetic, wounded performance that her arc catches hold of the film’s restless beats. Years pass, Emilia is united with Rita again. Emilia will realize that there is more desire left, which will make her confront harder truths about herself and the nation. The moment you think Audiard will slow down, he takes a wilder turn left with a new plot point. It is a like running a vehicle with no brakes- one is prepared to crash without fail. The audacity with which Audiard takes chances here is a thing of wonder, even though the melodrama often takes the same route as many of Pedro Almodovar’s films. Unfortunately, in Emilia Pérez, there is no room left for reflection, dialogue or curiosity.
The biggest concern for Emilia Pérez here is that it really does not know what it wants. Is this the same director who made Rust and Bone, and A Prophet? Tonally, the film is a mess. The screenplay is needlessly stretched and contrived, and Audiard’s direction feels extremely heavy-handed in the outsized song and dance numbers. It does not help that Selena Gomez gets a wafer-thin character to bring alive, with another ridiculous subplot revolving a new lover (played by Edgar Ramírez in a thankless role). The only late revelation occurs in the form of Adriana Paz, a woman who finds a new lease of life in contact with Emilia. Their scenes are the best bits in this mercilessly overstuffed debacle.
Why does Emilia fake her own death? Why is her transition treated like a death of an identity and then she sings of herself as ‘half he, half she’? Audiard, who was loosely inspired by a chapter from Boris Razon’s 2018 novel Écoute, seems less inspired to take a moment with his characters. We know too little about Emilia, too little about her desires and fears, her burst of earnest passion for the causes of her country. Rita’s point of view here does not add anything to what Emilia’s story deals with. The final push occurs in the laughably predictable third act involving more guns and tears.
Perhaps the most frustrating aspect about Emilia Pérez is the fact that the film has no idea about transness, trans identity and their experiences- evident in the way it misgenders the trans character at so many moments. This is a film that lacks any sort of cohesiveness to its chaos, where the memo seems to have been to break the rules of tone and action, and make a musical with a song on vaginoplasty. The ludicrousness of this film is not to be mistaken for originality, there is not an iota of heart in this mess of a musical.
