You have not seen a movie like Emilia Perez. Oh, you’ve seen movies about drug cartels and their extended criminal enterprises. You’ve seen musicals. You’ve even seen movies about trans people, more and more so as society becomes more progressive – or at least, as Hollywood tries to make it so. But all in the same movie? No, you have not seen that.
Some people believe this makes Jacques Audiard’s film a particular sort of trainwreck, that we should throw out its recent wins at the Golden Globes, because who believes any conclusions reached by that historically racist, sexist and myopic body, which has rightly experienced quite the loss of public trust in recent years. However, this year the Golden Globes got it right, and Jacques Audiard pretty much always gets it right – even if past efforts like A Prophet, Dheepan and The Sisters Brothers could not have less to do with what we’re seeing in Emilia Perez.
Then there are those who criticise an apparent incuriousness by Audiard in the trans experience, which is obviously the aspect of Emilia Perez that supersedes the others in terms of public discussion. Since the movie has already been playing in other parts of the world for a couple months, the conversation has already raged about whether the trans experience is a serious focal point for Audiard’s work, or whether it is just one component in a narrative that reaches for the heights of telenovela melodrama.
A critic only frontloads his review trying to defang a movie’s critics if he has a pretty special feeling for that movie. And the reality of Emilia Perez is that whatever missteps it may make – a tone-deaf musical number about sex-change operations being one – this is a glorious use of all the tools at Audiard’s disposal as a filmmaker, all the more impressive because he is using many of them for the first time. Emilia Perez could not be more different from the sort of criminally adjacent social dramas Audiard has tended to make, in tone if not in actual substance, yet it turns out he’s also great with making musicals about drug lords who want to live as women. Whether or not it gets every detail about the trans experience right, the fact that it engages with it at all should make it curious enough for most of us.
Juan “Manitas” Del Monte (Karla Sofia Gascon) is certainly curious about something, but it’s not the thing lawyer Rita Castro (Zoe Saldana) thinks when she’s led to meet him in an undisclosed location, hooded so there’s no chance she can disclose it. Once she realises who he is, she’s nearly shaking in fear as she computes the potential proximity to the end of her life. Yet he wouldn’t have called her here without a reason, though he extracts a promise that to listen to his proposal is to accept the assignment he has for her. Curious but now no longer fearing imminent death, she listens.
Manitas wants to follow a feeling that has always been with him, which is that he should have been born a woman. Rita initially suspects that his proposed gender reassignment surgery, which he has contracted Rita to expedite, is merely a means of going into hiding to escape the many people who’d like to kill the head of one of Mexico’s biggest drug cartels. But it doesn’t take long to appreciate the full sincerity of Manitas’ intentions, and the task to find the right doctor is underway.
There are plenty of complications to this plan, though. One is that Manitas, now Emilia, has a wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez), and two children. They’re to be told that Manitas has been killed, and DNA evidence from human remains will confirm this story. That would be a clean enough resolution for them to go on with their lives, but the resolution is anything but clean for Emilia, who wants to stay in their lives and therefore comes up with a plan to pose as Manitas’ long-lost sister and a sort of benefactor to them. Not only must she play it cool and not reveal the extent of her affection for her children, but she’s also got to manage her jealousy of Jessi’s new suitor (Edgar Ramirez). On the plus side, the wealthy Emilia plans to do things that Manitas never would have done, like create a non-profit organisation to identify the remains of cartel victims.
If it seems like there’s a lot going on in Emilia Perez, we haven’t even gotten to the songs yet, which are written by French singer Camille. (Audiard is French, just adding a further degree of difficulty, as this movie is mostly in Spanish with a little bit of English.) Miraculously, it all works in concert with each other, and any apparent disconnects just remind us of how different this is as a cinematic experience. You may not be singing the songs as you leave the cinema, but that’d primarily be because they’re not in your native language, if you’re reading this review – not because they aren’t up to snuff.
Audiard’s script is as much of a strength as his impossible feat of direction. Where a movie like Emilia Perez achieves lift-off is probably subjective, depending on what part speaks most to your interests. But there’s a good argument that this jumps forward from a good movie to a great one when it explores how hard it is for Emilia to truly leave behind Manitas, who has been in the driver’s seat of this body until now. The way the narrative explores this, and how Emilia wants to stay in the lives of those she loves without them realising who she is, is fodder for endless contemplation.
Gascon is a revelation in the dual role of Manitas and Emilia, the former of whom has comparatively little time on screen. The trans actress had not acted in a film in more than ten years, and her TV roles only recently shifted to women. That this actress was waiting there, ready to give this sort of performance, will astonish anyone who witnesses the range of emotions she puts on screen. Equivalent praise belongs to Saldana and Gomez, both of whom have done good work, but neither of whom have taken on roles that required as much of them as Emilia Perez requires – and in the language of their heritage, which neither has been called on to use professionally.
There is always going to be an asterisk next to a film like Emilia Perez, which occurs as soon as some voice in the audience questions its trans credentials. With Emilia Perez in particular, that’s more than one voice. However, it’s hard to imagine that the alternative would be preferable, that someone not make a movie like this because they’re worried about not getting it just right – and therefore, delay further the representation it carries with it. Give me a slightly imperfect Emilia Perez any day, rather than tell me that no Emilia Perez is better.
Emilia Perez opens in cinemas today.