EMILIA PEREZ – Review by Lynn Venhaus
Fearless and unflinching, writer-director Jacques Audiard’s bold fever dream of a movie colors outside the genre lines. Emilia Perez is unlike any conventional cartel crime thriller that’s gone before.
Add that it’s a musical, in the Spanish language, and France’s Oscar submission for Best International Feature, and you have a sui generis film that’s operatic in tone and organic in its delivery of songs and dance.
Set in Mexico City, Rita (Zoe Saldana), frustrated and in a rut after being unable to stop widespread corruption, gets an unexpected, lucrative offer from a cartel kingpin. He seeks her help in retiring and undergoing sex reassignment surgery. Manitas (Karla Sofia Gascon) will be able to evade others and become Emilia, the woman he has dreamed of being.
Manitas’ wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and their two sons are unaware of the gender affirmation plan, think he’s dead, and live in exile in Switzerland. That is, until Emilia arranges a reunion (one-sided). Can someone escape their past completely?
The performances are uniformly strong, with Gascon a revelation and Saldana in a career-best portrait unlike anything she’s ever done. Gomez also surprises with her dramatic turn. In support, Adriana Paz is the sympathetic Epifania and Edgar Ramirez as Jessi’s mysterious fiancé Gustavo.
The female ensemble collectively won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival, where the film also won the Jury Prize.
While Audiard’s storytelling is complex and riveting, just like his critically acclaimed A Prophet and Rust and Bone, his creative team has collaborated on a visual striking film. Cinematographer Paul Guillaume switches from harsh-lit teeming street scenes to the escape of a sweeter, affluent life, and his work is integral to the film’s overall power.
Audiard loosely based the film on Boris Razon’s 2018 novel “Ecoute,” and he first wrote it as an opera libretto. It has the rhythms of traditional opera, thrilling in its construction, especially as the story careens to its explosive conclusion.
The original songs by Camille, original score by Clement Ducol, and choreography by Damien Jamet deepen the characters’ yearnings. The four women are seeking happiness on their own terms, and that’s a satisfying, unifying aspect. Gascon’s beautiful rendering of Her explains her happiness at becoming her true self.
Set to open theatrically in the U.S. on Nov. 1, the two hour, 12-minute film will begin streaming on Netflix Nov. 13.
Exhilarating and vibrant, Emilia Perez is a comic-tinged wild ride with romance, desire, redemption and a dark side all put into play. One of the most audacious films of the year, look for it to be on many shortlists for its bravura filmmaking and triumphant acting.
