It’s hard to describe how far off the rails Emilia Pérez goes by the time the movie reaches its outlandish conclusion. A musical transgender crime drama set against the backdrop of narco gangs in Mexico, the movie sounds ludicrous—and is even harder to fathom as you watch it. Zoe Saldana stars as Rita, a criminal defense attorney who helps Juan “Manitas” Del Monte, a male drug lord, secretly transition. Now Emilia Pérez (Karla Sofia Gascon), she moves back in with her two young sons and wife (Selena Gomez), presenting herself as a benevolent relative. It’s a clash of motivations and narrative strategies, especially for Saldana’s character, who opens the movie with an elaborate musical number about her moral qualms and then, only a few scenes later, agrees to work for Manitas at the drop of a big check. Meanwhile, aesthetically, the movie courts chaos. Much of the filmmaking is claustrophobic—with harshly lit characters in the foreground against a deep black of nothingness—while other techniques are randomly adopted, then quickly dropped. (Gomez features in separate numbers involving cameraphone footage, a karaoke screen, and a traditional studio soundstage.) As for the songs, they mostly consist of raspily whispered anti-melodies, though Saldana anchors one spirited number, “La Vaginoplastia,” set in a gender-reassignment surgical center. I think, for that number at least, Emilia Pérez wants to be camp? Directed by Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, The Sisters Brothers), whose heart might be in the right place—the movie at least honors Emilia’s dysmorphia, rather than using it as a plot gimmick—but whose execution resembles something like community-theater Sicario, pulsed in an erratic blender.
(2/3/2025)
