Emilia Pérez, the latest project from celebrated French filmmaker Jacques Audiard (Rust & Bone) represents a wild departure for the elderly director, and is polarizing audiences for both its flashy execution and its questionable approach to trans representation. Starring Spanish actress Karla Sofía Gascón (who came out as transgender in 2018) in the titular role, the darkly dramatic musical was awarded a well-deserved joint Best Actress prize at the Cannes Film Festival for its four leading ladies (Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz).
The first character we meet in this sprawling tale is Rita (Saldaña), a brilliant but underappreciated attorney in Mexico City. Struggling and unsatisfied with her life, she is approached with a mysterious and unusual offer. Powerful cartel boss Manitas Del Monte (Gascón) will pay her a life-changing changing sum of money if she assists him in his gender transition, erases all traces of his identity, and squires his family to safety in Switzerland. It’s a wild conceit, and sets the stage for the epic rollercoaster ride that follows. Spanning years and continents, Emilia Peréz is epic in scope, but light on subtlety. It is a musical, after all.
High on style, the film looks… and sounds… absolutely incredible. The score is immediately immersive, and while some have criticized the film’s musical numbers as feeling out of place, I felt that they were in many ways the highlight of the film. From the very opening number, the choreography is intricate, absorbing, and passionately performed. This is not unexpected coming from the likes of pop star Selena Gomez (delivering the performance of her career as Del Monte’s wife Jessi), but Saldaña’s performances unquestionably steal the show. Both actresses add a great deal of depth and nuance to their portrayals of two very complicated – and woefully underwritten – women.
Sadly, one of my greatest criticisms of the film is the underdevelopment of its central characters. Even Emilia herself feels like more of an archetype or a symbol than a fully realized person. The backstory of a wildly powerful drug boss who has spent their entire life hiding their gender identity should be fascinating, but Audiard seems oddly uninterested in his own characters’ motivations. Late in the film, Emilia strikes up a love affair with a woman named Epifanía (Paz), but her character – as well as their connection – is so thinly sketched that it feels difficult to invest in the outcome of their relationship.
I always find it interesting when filmmakers choose to work in a language they do not understand, but this approach is old hat for Audiard, who claims to prefer this method, as it prevents him from getting too caught up in the details…since he can’t understand them anyway. An odd approach to be sure, and one with questionable results. Perhaps more troubling, is that in addition to this linguistic incongruity, Audiard has embedded his latest film in a complex socio-political context completely foreign to him, and if the credits are to be believed, chosen to employ virtually no Mexican crew members in positions of creative power on the film.
Finally, the film’s greatest problem lies in its depiction of its central character: Emilia Peréz herself. While the talented Gascón brings much to the role, it’s difficult to know what to make of her. Despite Pérez’ undeniable love for her children, it is difficult to shake off the lingering memory of the horrible violence and death inflicted by her previous incarnation as brutal drug lord Del Monte. As much as Audiard would seem to like us to believe that Pérez and Del Monte are fundamentally two different people, they’re not, and to buy into this seems a terrible misapprehension of the trans experience. The message seems to be that through this physical transition, Pérez is essentially given a clean slate, redeemed for the crimes of her earlier life, not just by the audience, but by all those who surround her. While Gascón delivers a compelling performance, it all feels like smoke and mirrors. The same could be said of the film itself, which has style to spare, but has been constructed on a shockingly shaky foundation.
Emilia Pérez is currently streaming on Netflix.
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