You can change how you look but not who you are, the doctor responsible for the transition of a brutal cartel boss argues. This statement echoes Jacques Audiard’s last movie. It accompanies the spectator behind the screen, even long after leaving the cinema. Also, other questions, present in Audiard’s previous movies like Paris, 13th District (2021), arise. Can people change? If so, to what extent? Are humans willing to renegotiate relations and give up some of their power for the happiness of others? Emilia Pérez premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival in the main competition section gaining immediate attention. It not only won the best jury prize award, but its female ensemble also earned the prize for best performance. It is now the official French entry for the Academy Awards and a Golden Globe candidate in most categories. Acquired by Netflix for 8 million US$, it is coming out on the platform in mid-November in the US, Canada, and the UK. Emila Pérez is a sassy musical thriller polarizing but hard to ignore.
Manita (Karla Sofia Gascón) is a narco, the dreadful boss of the most powerful Mexican cartel. His tattooed face is covered by long oily hair, his deep voice is coming from somewhere far far away, thundering in his massive body, and his manners are not the sweetest. Rita (Zoe Saldana) is a talented lawyer, defending the undefendables. She is minute, her eyes piercing the interlocutor and her hair neatly collected in a braid, her manners are deferent. A match made in heaven which, despite a rough first meeting, is made to last and become stronger and stronger despite all the odds. Rita is complaining about her life, in a solo co-danced by a group of all-female janitors, in the courtroom where she has just successfully defended a man responsible for femminicide. She gets a phone call and soon after is kidnapped, old school, with a black cape and a long car ride to nowhere. Manita is the principal. He commissions Rita not only to organize his transition to become Emilia but also to fake his death and personally relocate his wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and their two kids to Switzerland. This is in exchange for a lot of money, as the godfather would say: it’s an offer you can’t refuse. Rita accepts and an adventure of self-affirmation, freedom, and redemption starts.
Emilia Pérez is an old story in a shiny new skin. Once again pluri-awarded French director Audiard experiments with new languages. Crucial life questions are addressed, danced, and sung away in glittered-poppy tones, thus never interfering with the moral dimension pushed through long plane sequences. Among the many actual themes, like gender identity, machist violence, and corruption, redemption is probably the central one. Each of the four female characters aspires to it. Emilia wants to make up for her past cruelty, Rita wants to finally commit to something right, that she believes in, Jessi wants to live the love and life she has been denied so far, specularly to Epifanía (Adriana Paz), Emilia’s new lover. The theme of redemption is cross-cultural and traceable in storytelling since its beginnings, in mythical and religious accounts and writing. Hence the movie’s spiritual references, both aesthetical and dogmatic.
Mexico’s rich cultural heritage gives texture and life to an otherwise not-so-original story of manipulation and power abuse. Mexico City is a protagonist per se, as much as its sounds, colors, smells, places, and inhabitants. The original songs by French pop singer Camille in collaboration with her art/life partner Clément Ducol integrated well the city’s soundscape. They succeeded in molding a catchy soundtrack while resisting the too-tempting reggaeton’s tunes. Some sequences almost feel like a musical video per sè, as the duet between Jessi and her sexy evil lover interpreted by Gustavo Brun. Also, devotional folk art emerges as a strong reference for the director and the crew, in the costumes by Virginie Montel and scenography by Sandra Castello, as well as in the photography by Paul Guilhaume and the composition of frames. Often, in scenes, the leading woman is surrounded by other elements, as in an icon. The colors are flashy, neon-like, with contrasting dark backgrounds, mirroring the liveliness of the protagonists in an oppressive society. Meanwhile, the idea of resurrection and reincarnation run as a thin line throughout the movie and is crowned in the final scene, where a Madonna-like statue, representing Emilia as a martyr, is carried in procession by regular people on the street. The ontological change, much aspired to by the movie protagonist, seems to have finally taken place.
The original songs are by French pop singer Camille in collaboration with her art/life partner Clément Ducol who composed the score.
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