‘Emilia Pérez’ Hits Some Exhilarating Highs but is Largely Uneven
A musical, a crime thriller, a trans romance that never mentions the word trans, "Emilia Pérez" is its own special creation.
As an original, mostly Spanish-language musical, Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez hits some exhilarating highs. The score, a heady mix of marches, rock, electro, and hip-hop composed by Clément Ducol and French singer Camille, steps off to a strong start with “El Alegato” (“The Argument”).
Zoe Saldaña, underrated for the heartfelt credibility she brought to three different billion-dollar fantasy film franchises, leads the song-and-dance as Rita Mora Castro, a principled but worn-down attorney in the public defender’s office of Mexico City.
Throughout the film, Saldaña imbues Rita with the same gravitas that made her Gamora the emotional linchpin of The Guardians of the Galaxy, adding the charge of a trained dancer’s physicality to Rita’s presence even outside the musical numbers.
In “El Alegato,” Rita, rapping solo in her apartment and marching with the public she defends, puts the final touches on closing arguments in defense of headline-grabbing client Gabriel Mendoza, accused of murdering his wife. She won’t be the one to deliver her words in court, but, following the verdict, she receives a call from a mysterious would-be client offering a lucrative proposition that could free her from the drudgery of the P.D.’s office.
As a crime story — there’s a powerful drug lord on the other end of that call — Emilia Pérez offers a fairly conventional, though compelling, drama of a cartel king attempting to bury his past and start a new life. Mexican drug lord Manitas Del Monte happens to have heaps of money to throw around in pursuit of his goal, but, even for an outlaw with such crazy pull, he’ll face stiff complications.
Del Monte is portrayed by Karla Sofía Gascón, a trans actress heavily made-up in the rugged male role, and wielding an effectively menacing rap flow in Del Monte’s initial face-to-face with Rita, where he hires the lawyer to arrange the complicated aspects of his new life.
First and foremost among Rita’s tasks as a well-financed fixer, she must arrange a secret sex change operation for Del Monte.
The brutal cartel king, married with two kids, is ready to be the woman she’s long felt herself to be. So, here we also have a trans narrative, that, noticeably and strangely as the film unfolds, applies no such terminology or label to Del Monte’s experience, and depicts gender transition with a profound emphasis on the physical process, in this case, of a man becoming a woman.
There’s even a cheesy number about it, “La Vaginoplastia,” led by Rita, as she ventures from Bangkok to Delhi to Tel Aviv investigating what the surgery will entail for her client. With a chorus in scrubs singing “Man to woman/Woman to man,” the Broadway-style number, credited to songwriters Ducol, Camille, and Audiard, makes a high-kicking spectacle of sex change operations.
Perhaps a lighthearted attempt to demystify an esoteric procedure, the number comes off as tacky. Also, is this movie afraid of acknowledging a trans woman for who she is underneath it all? “I want another face, I want another skin,” Del Monte sings in “Deseo,” concluding, “My only desire is to be her.”
Thus, post-surgery, she emerges as Señora Emilia Pérez, played by Gascón, no great singer but glowing onscreen as the glamorous reborn lady, who still has loose ends to tie up from a former life of crime. Evolving with Emilia, the musical crime trans drama draws on another genre, shifting finally to a tale of redemption and romance that’s carried off with panache.
Writer-director Audiard based the script on his own opera libretto, inspired by a transgender character in Boris Razon’s novel Écoute. Best known for A Prophet and Rust and Bone, the filmmaker brings Emilia Pérez‘s cornucopia of genres and tones together with bold camerawork, color, and editing, including dynamic use of split-screen.
The pulsating visual rhythms, along with Ducol and Camille’s hummable melodies and rippling rap verses, are also aptly expressed in Damien Jalet’s kinetic choreography.
Holding together this omnibus odyssey is Saldaña’s emotionally grounded Rita. For her galvanizing performance, Saldaña shared the Best Actress prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival with co-star Gascón, as well as Adriana Paz, who portrays Epifanía, a bright light in Emilia’s new life, and Selena Gomez, playing Del Monte’s wife Jessi, always pressing for answers but generally okay with living in well-maintained ignorance.
The Cannes jury was generous, though.
Gomez, unsteady in her Spanish dialogue scenes, only really matches the movie’s moxie in a pair of musical numbers — “Bienvenida,” Jessi’s punk-electro song about being a bird in a gilded cage, and “Mi Camino,” a karaoke love song for Jessi and her sidepiece Gustavo (an underused Édgar Ramírez). By contrast, Gascón, solidly acting her dual roles, is less convincing when issuing Emilia’s musical moments.
As for the fourth in that awarded quartet, Paz is indeed winning as Epifanía, a victim of cartel violence who helps show Emilia a path to real redemption. Through Epifanía and Emilia’s relationship, the film takes on another moving dimension, casting the war against violent cartels as both a public and a very personal struggle, while, ultimately, offering our title heroine the possibility in her new life to embrace a love that’s more than skin deep.
Emilia Pérez (★★★☆☆) is playing in select theaters and is available for streaming on Netflix on November 13. Visit www.fandango.com or www.netflix.com.
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