‘Emilia Pérez’ breaks genres and bursts into song in a one-of-a-kind movie

|
Shanna Besson/PAGE 114 - WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS - PATHÉ FILMS - FRANCE 2 CINÉMA
Karla Sofía Gascón as Emilia Pérez and Adriana Paz as Epifanía in "Emilia Pérez."

Certain movies are sometimes referred to as genre-breaking but “Emilia Pérez” carries this designation to the wildest extreme. It’s a feminist musical crime thriller about a transgender cartel boss. Doubly surprising is that, for all its strangeness – or perhaps because of it – the mashup often works.

Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldaña), a Mexican attorney, is fed up wasting her talent successfully defending crooks and killers. Shortly after her latest victory, she is approached by Manitas Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón), a shadowy cartel overlord with a raspy voice and silver-capped teeth. He wants to fake his death so that he can undergo gender-affirming surgery – not to evade justice but to become the woman he has always believed himself to be. If Rita can arrange the disappearance and the surgery – as well as relocating his unknowing “widow” Jessi (Selena Gomez) and their two children to Switzerland – she will be rich. 

Warily, inevitably, she agrees. Her motive in accepting the offer is not solely mercenary. Like Manitas, who will become Emilia Pérez (also played by Gascón), she seeks to radically revise her existence. And yet the criminal she is helping is, or was, among the worst of the worst. Without making it explicit, the movie, co-written and directed by Jacques Audiard, makes it clear her newfound wealth is funded by violence and murder.

Why We Wrote This

“Emilia Pérez” is a feminist musical crime thriller about a transgender cartel boss. Part operetta, part telenovela, it shimmies between the archetypal and the intensely personal, writes Monitor film critic Peter Rainer.

The moral quandary setting off “Emilia Pérez” is whether these malefactors are capable of reversing the damage of their lives and becoming exemplary human beings. Rita believes it is possible, which is perhaps one reason she accedes to Manitas’s offer. In one of the more spangly musical numbers, set in a Bangkok hospital, Rita belts out, “Changing the body changes the soul/Changing the soul changes society/Changing society changes everything.” 

Why is this film a musical? One plausible answer is: Why not? The characters unveil their innermost musings and fears in song, ranging from whispers to full-throated arias. Audiard has said that he discovered in writing the movie that it was “closer to an operetta than a film script.” It is also, in many ways, an amped-up telenovela, featuring Rita, Emilia, and Jessi as divas on the march.

Saldaña, Gascón, and Gomez – along with Adriana Paz, who appears late in the movie as the Mexican mother of a son who was “disappeared” by the cartels – jointly won the best actress award at the Cannes film festival. (The film is also France’s Oscar entry for best international feature.) For Gascón, a popular Spanish actor who transitioned in 2018, the award represents the first time Cannes has honored a trans artist. 

It’s a strong performance, as are the others, especially Saldaña’s, with its mix of softness and steel. But what keeps Gascón’s from greatness is that we don’t see enough traces of the vicious cartel leader peeking beneath the reborn exterior. This, no doubt, was an intentional directorial choice. Emilia devotes her newfound life to establishing a foundation that helps the families of the disappeared. It is both her mission and her penance. In this film’s moral universe, it would not do to feature too much backsliding. Changing the body changes the soul. 

The movie also makes it a point to stress Emilia’s love for her children. Years after her transition, with Rita now allied in her cause, Jessi and the kids are brought back to Mexico under the pretext of living with Manitas’s loving “cousin,” a woman they’ve never heard of before. The cousin, of course, is Emilia. This development has its “Mrs. Doubtfire” side, but Audiard doesn’t play it for laughs. Emilia’s yearning for her kids is offered up as a maternal archetype. 

What’s off-putting about “Emilia Pérez,” more so than its musical interludes or its genre swapping, is this shimmying between the archetypal and the intensely personal. The characters pour out their hearts in drama and song, and yet I found it difficult to feel deeply for them. I think this is because they are presented not simply as people but as moral avatars. Come what may, they saw the light and reformed their terrible ways. Mission accomplished. 

It’s a lovely, perhaps necessary sentiment. But as this outlandish, one-of-a-kind movie demonstrates at its best, the world is far more complicated than that.

B+ 

Rated R for language, some violent content, and sexual material. In French, English, and Spanish, with subtitles. Currently in theaters and on Netflix starting Nov. 13.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to ‘Emilia Pérez’ breaks genres and bursts into song in a one-of-a-kind movie
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2024/1107/emilia-perez-karla-gascon-zoe-saldana-selena-gomez
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe