Emilia Pérez plays as if someone’s YouTube algorithm tried to make a movie. It’s a mad melting pot of tones, genres and ideas that harmonise into a flashy but uneven spectrum. One can appreciate the film’s wilfully idiosyncratic nature, but the deeper you look the more you’re hit by the shallowness of its craft and the regressiveness hindering its otherwise interesting ambitions.
Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldaña) is a struggling lawyer based in Mexico. Her walls are plastered with accolades yet her victorious cases bring her no joy, for, as shown in her opening case, she is often arguing in the defence of bad people who she knows are guilty. A sudden opportunity comes to her in an unexpected way when cartel Kingpin, Juan “Manitas” Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón), smuggles her to one of their outposts to make a unique offer. That offer: help them to discreetly undergo gender-affirming surgery so that they may leave the cartel life behind and lead a legitimate, lawful life as the woman they’ve always been.
Agreeing to this proposal – albeit due to the promise of money and the threat of violence – Rita successfully aids Manitas in faking their death, leaving their old life behind and transitioning into her true identity – Emilia Pérez (also Gascón). Years later, Emilia recruits Rita once more so that she may reunite with her children and former wife Jessi (Selena Gomez), without telling them of who she once was. Yet this colliding of two worlds will inevitably lead to conflict and tragedy.
Writer-director Jacques Audiard is a cisgender male who is telling a fundamentally trans story; someone who, despite the film’s Mexican setting and largely Spanish dialogue, is based in France and even shot the film in a Parisian studio when plans to shoot on location fell through. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. Plenty of cisgender people are capable of sharing stories and experiences outside of their own via empathy and good faith – consider what Sean Baker did with Tangerine. Yet this factor makes problematic representations all the more troubling, and Emilia Pérez is nothing if not problematic.
The film is essentially a story of redemption, as Emilia struggles to reconcile her previous life with the idyllic one she has now obtained through Rita’s efforts. Being back with her family – none of whom are aware of Emilia’s past life – also brings back memories of her time as a cartel Kingpin, leading her to create a non-profit for the families of people she and her underlings had killed. There’s a compelling idea here that lends itself well to themes of self reconciliation. Transitioning into the person she’s always been on the inside is a freeing process but only by atoning for her actions, instead of hiding from them, can Emilia truly become free.
The problem is that the script treats Emilia as a character of two halves rather than one complicated whole. The moment in which she transitions to Emilia the film all but absolves her of guilt, even going so far as to glorify her as morally upstanding. Her founding of this non-profit is a decent start, but as she never comes clean about her crimes to anyone except Rita, the film’s theme of redemption feels hollow and insincere – as if to suggest that because Emilia underwent transition that somehow wipes her slate anew. She never truly atones for her actions in any substantive way. In rare scenes where Emilia’s past violent temperaments come to the surface, her voice even gets deeper, which is even more troubling as it implies that Emilia’s capacities for violence and gentleness are somehow gendered traits of men and women respectively, rather than traits of one complicated human being.
For a movie that prides itself on its representation, the characters and setting of Emilia Pérez are rather bare-boned. Mexico is portrayed mostly through stereotypes – as little more than a country of drug warfare and football – which is worsened by the lack of Mexican leads or locations. Rita is the leading character outside of Emilia yet she’s essentially side-lined once Emilia is reunited with Jessi and her children. She’s reduced to behind-the-scenes dealings while Emilia navigates a surreal Mrs Doubtfire-adjacent plotline where her children are unaware of who she is to them. Jessi is also in a complicated situation yet her agency and feelings are treated as though they’re the whims of an adolescent – her newfound relationship with Gustavo (Edgar Ramirez) being portrayed as a betrayal of Emilia rather than Jessi simply trying to make a life for her and her children. The characters, despite their on paper potential, are collectively bland and exist purely to serve the undercooked plot. This critic can’t speak to the cast’s Spanish speaking efforts, but if feedback from Mexican audiences are anything to go by then there’s little praise to be given there either.
This would amount to a dull, even uncomfortable, drama if not for the film’s bizarre choice to incorporate musical numbers. Although calling them numbers is charitable – they’re closer to melodic dialogue than songs. Perhaps the most notable instance of this is when Rita flies across the world trying to convince doctors to perform Emilia’s desired surgery, her discussion with Dr. Wasserman (Mark Ivanir) being little more than a debate put to a tune rather than a musical examination of theme or character. It makes the casting of gifted singers like Selena Gomez feel obsolete, especially when you factor in the awkward choreography, drab blocking and dizzying editing that form these numbers. That’s even when you ignore the lyrics; it’s hard to listen to lines like the now widely memed “man to woman; woman to man; from penis to vagina” without bursting into laughter at the childish oversimplification of its own subject matter.
Karla Sofía Gascón recently made history by being the first trans actor to receive an Oscar nomination for her leading performance here. It’s a remarkable achievement and, out of the entire cast, her performance is comfortably the strongest as she juggles inner turmoil with outward appearances. There’s a certain fantastical quality to the film that lends an air of kinetic energy to some of the choreography – a whimsy that contrasts chillingly with Gascón’s more grounded moments. But it creates the impression of a film not in control of its own craft – as if it’s throwing things against the wall to see what sticks. At best the end result is messy and at worst it’s technically, possibly morally, questionable. For a film so unashamedly bombastic it reeks of inauthenticity.
Emilia Pérez aims to dazzle with its peculiar hybridising craft, yet it ultimately falls flat as its intriguing ideas and erratic style become superficial, even dubious, when held up to scrutiny. The fact that Audiard seemingly did little if any research into the film’s delicate topics of trans lives and Mexican cartels does nothing to help its case. One can perhaps admire the film’s audacious, if scattershot, craftsmanship, as well as Gascón’s commanding performance. But Mexico, the trans community and, frankly, movie-going audiences in general, deserve much better than Emilia Pérez.
Emilia Pérez is streaming on Netflix
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Director: Jacques Audiard
Writer: Jacques Audiard
Stars: Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez
Runtime: 132 minutes
Countries: France, Mexico and Belgium
