Original caricature by Jeff York of Zoe Saldana, Karla Sofía Gascón, and Selena Gomez in EMILIA PEREZ (copyright 2024).
For those who think that Hollywood has run out of fresh ideas, here’s a pitch for you: A Mexican drug cartel leader wants to transition to become a woman, keep the millions he made illegally, yet hold onto his unknowing family in a mansion in Mexico. Oh, and did I mention that it’s all spoken and sung in Spanish, because the film is also a musical? Indeed, EMILIA PEREZ is one ambitious and unique pitch and the fact that such a complicated narrative got made is almost as shocking. Add in the fact that it comes from veteran French director Jacques Audiard, a filmmaker known for gritty dramas like A PROPHET and RUST AND BONE, and you have a back story as audacious as the film’s narrative.
Indeed, on courage alone, EMILIA PEREZ earns an A +. However, as a musical and/or film, the end result isn’t quite as impressive as one would hope. Despite its trio of superb performances from Zoe Saldana, Karla Sofia Gascón and Selena Gomez, and terrific production values across the board, the film’s script has numerous plot holes, its songs at times feels arbitrary, and the second hour becomes all too easily predictable. Still, much of the film is invigorating and even moving. And given that too many entries into the cineplex these days are tiresome sequels, reboots, and umpteenth extensions of franchises, this film is a very admirable, swing for the fences.
The story begins with overworked lawyer Rita Castro (Saldana) getting kidnapped by a notorious drug cartel kingpin Manitas Del Monte (Gascón) and made an offer she can’t refuse. He will give her seven figures to help him find a doctor willing to perform gender reassignment surgery and keep it very hush-hush. It turns out that Manitas, despite his macho swagger and iron fist rule, has always fancied himself a woman and he’s tired of hiding in the shadows. Thus, Rita sets him up with a doctor in Tel Aviv, as well as a cover story chronicling his ‘death’ so that he may disappear and then reappear in his new guise as “Emilia Perez” after the transition surgery and medical treatments. Rita even loads up Manitas’s young wife Jessi (Gomez) and the kids, moving them to the snowy mountains of Switzerland to start a new life sans father.
A few musical numbers and four years later, Rita is enjoying a swanky London dinner party when she is reunited with her former client. Emilia is glamorous and happy, but she wants Jessie and the kids to return to Mexico with her to live in a mansion. Her scheme is to claim she’s Manitas’ long-lost cousin so they can all place house together again. Clearly, Emilia wants to eat her cake and have it too but at this point in the story, the plot starts to become all too predictable as it sings and dances its way to an inevitably violent third act.
For a film that has so many surprises, it’s a shame that one can all to easily see the green-eyed monster brewing in Emilia from the get-go of her reappearance. The same goes for Emilia’s dangerous overweening attention towards the kids. No good can come from that. Sure, a lesbian love story for Emilia late in the game feels unexpected, not to mention a major subplot involving her efforts to right many of the wrongs committed by Manitas’ brutal regime, but too much of the story feels…inevitable.
All three leads are terrific, but the songs are far from it. The choreography is a missed opportunity as well, feeling almost haphazard at times. This may be a non-traditional musicals on many levels, but I wish the film had a couple of numbers where the songs and choreography truly impressed. Instead, the one song that stands out is the quietest of them all showcasing the sadness of Manitas’ young daughter via a heartbreaking lullaby. Saldana has a big number in the third act, dancing on tables and all around the elite at a fundraiser, but it’s so poorly staged and shot that it feels amateurish. Surely, this was not the end result Audiard was going for with his lofty ambitions.
Nonetheless, I did like and care for the trio of forlorn women in this melodrama and I commend the film for being done in Spanish too. There’s a lot of story here and Audiard manages to keep most of it clear, but he glosses over far too much of Emilia’s transition, her maintenance, or fear of discovery. Emilia, despite being the title character, feels arms-length in both her male and female personas; she should’ve been given some gut-wrenching solos to express all the angst she must be going through. Instead, it’s Rita who feels the most accessible, even though halfway through the film her role becomes much more secondary.
As the film progressed, I started having more questions for the filmmakers. Why didn’t Audiard address questions about Rita’s re-emergence in Mexico after disappearing for so many years? Why didn’t his script include anyone digging to find out more about Emilia’s backstory after she becomes a nationwide philanthropist? And is Emilia such a good actress that Jessi wouldn’t be able to pick up on any characteristics that would remind her of her husband? The unaddressed parts of this movie confound, considering its ambitions and all those parts that have been examined and rendered so well.
By the end of EMILIA PEREZ, I was moved but frustrated. It invests in a brave examination of identity, family, womanhood, and sexual politics, yet it blithely ignores all kinds of exposition, potential character conflicts, and even the most basic of inner turmoil that could have given it all more juice. I hope more movies as audacious and original as this continue to get made, but I also hope they’ll be more thoroughly realized.
