Emilia Perez - (Netflix)
'Mrs. Doubtfire' meets 'Sicario,' and it actually mostly works
What’s it about? Cartel leader Emilia enlists Rita, an unappreciated lawyer, to help fake her death so that she can finally live authentically as her true self.
Who it’s for? Fans of over-the-top musical dramas, admirers of Selena Gomez and/or Zoe Saldana, if you like ridiculous movies, fans of highly stylized films, if you like genre-blending movies
Who should avoid? Viewers who prefer grounded and realistic stories, if you dislike musicals, if you have a distaste for melodrama, fans of subtle filmmaking
Watch if you like: Narcos, Moulin Rouge!, Pose, In the Heights
News and Notes:
Premiered at Cannes 2024
Won the Jury Prize and the Best Actress Award at Cannes
Debuted on Netflix November 13th
Schmear’s Verdict: Emilia Perez is a wildly inventive musical that thrives on bold performances and heartfelt ambition, even as its telenovela twists stretch belief.
A sensitive Mexican cartel leader hires a lawyer to help him secretly transition to a woman. Years later, she re-enters her old life to be with her children and make amends for the violence she caused.
So Sicario meets Mrs. Doubtfire, and lest I forget to mention, it’s a musical.
On paper, the new Jacques Audiard film Emilia Perez sounds asinine, and while it is undoubtedly flawed, it’s a testament to its charming boldness and stellar performances that it mostly gets pulled off, and at very least, is something you’ve never seen before.
One of the leads of this impassioned film is Zoe Saldana, a lawyer drawn into the shadows to facilitate a Narco’s gender reassignment surgery. Perhaps grateful that she’s neither blue nor green, Saldana turns in the strongest performance of her career. She’s a capable singer, has outstanding physicality, and seems to relish speaking her native language.
Across from her is trans actress Karla Sofía Gascón, first playing Narco "Manitas,” then later, after a 4-year time jump, the resplendent, magisterial Emilia Perez. Manitas convinces Rita to come aboard, positing the hypothetical, “If you change the body, can you change the soul, and in turn save society?” It’s a touching question, and one I don’t remember ever being asked on Better Call Saul!
Saldana and Gascón are tremendous together. Selena Gomez gets to chew some scenery as Manitas’ ex-wife. She’s a fun, familiar face to see, but she doesn’t quite feel real in this world.
Returning to Mexico, Emilia is saintly and ascendant, making things right in her soul by setting up a sort of NGO tasked with finding the young, dead bodies disappeared by cartel violence, digging up the exact graves she once dug. It’s a pursuit that’s both open-hearted and guilt-ridden, consistent with how she feels “half of everything,” living a half existence.
The set-up of Emilia Perez, the audacious “what” and “why” of it, seems more important than the specific mechanics and the “how.” There are more than a few times you have to just go with the soapy, impossible telenovela plot. And if you’re expecting Andrew Lloyd Webber-level show tunes, I’d temper expectations, as these songs are nothing to sing home about.
At the start of the third act, in spite of outrageous, implausible circumstances, everything was going quite smoothly for our characters. More tension should’ve been ramping up. Then, too late, the film dives wildly towards unmotivated conflict—a turn that came too far afield for me. Edgar Ramirez is involved, but his character is not built up well at all.
So while Emilia Perez certainly devolved into ridiculousness, that’s not the only way I’ll remember it. It’s a winner because of its bold vision, standout lead performances, and messy imagination. And Greta Gerwig’s jury agreed, rewarding its performers with the Best Actress Award and the film with the Jury Prize.
A flash in the Cannes, or something greater? We’ll see when it hits Netflix, which snapped it up for a reported $12 million, no doubt with golden statues in their eyes.
