Director Jacques Audiard warmed my polyglot soul with his multilingual approach in Emilia Pérez. Constantly floating between English and Spanish, if the film does nothing else, it should influence you to learn a new language. Even though mi corazón received the film warmly initially, it takes off in a myriad of directions and never takes hold of a true path.
I’ve had beef this calendar year with studios releasing loglines and trailers that are either completely misleading or expose too much of the film. Here, the synopsis does an unsatisfactory job of painting an accurate portrait for the viewer of what will take place.
Manitas Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón) is a dangerous cartel leader in Mexico, looking for a way out. He decides that his money and resources should go towards a gender-affirming surgery to become a woman. Knowing this can only be done in secrecy, he recruits Rita (Zoe Saldaña), an attorney who’s left unfulfilled at her job (and we learn this through song). Tasked with finding the right surgeon for the job, she travels the world over in hopes of landing the right fit. Once she finds a surgeon willing to oblige Del Monte’s request, Rita gets officially strapped into the wildest ride of her life.
When I first read that this was a musical, it rose to the higher ranks of my to-do list. Creative presentations onstage and through song have always been held in high regard, plus, if done right, they look even better onscreen (a la Les Misérables). But Manitas Del Monte, who eventually becomes Emilia Pérez, is no Jean Valjean, and the musical numbers (as few as there were) either dazzled or missed the mark.
Marketed as an odyssey that follows the journey of four women in Mexico, it’s more a story of following through on decisions without accountability for their results. Each of the women in question, Emilia (Gascón), Rita (Saldaña), Jessi (Selena Gomez), and Epifanía (Adriana Paz) sits in situations they desire to change. A major shift happens in their lives and the four of them are forced to take risks that would change their futures forever.
Manitas went through with a plan to fake his death and send his family off to Lausanne, Switzerland for safety, clearing the way for his surgery to become Emilia and be free from not only the cartel life but life as a man. It didn’t take long before she started to miss her family. Rita wanted nothing more than to leave her job of monotony, where a predictable schedule and lack of acknowledgment awaited her. But deciding to work for a cartel leader surely meant you’d be bound for life. With Emilia’s desperation to see her children and Rita forever bound to her beck and call, Jessi, the now widow of Manitas, falls victim to the natural desire for companionship.
For this to be a musical, the songs were few and frivolous. Zoe Saldaña did an excellent job performing her bilingual melodies, even more so than Selena Gomez. With the latter, a stellar performance is expected since her music career is what brought her to this point, but where they differ is that Saldana was tasked with more to do; more emotions, more singing, more action. Gomez was stunning no doubt, but to not be the main attraction, Saldaña had an exceptional outing that should see her front and center during awards season. While Karla Sofía Gascón was impressive (her line, “For the first time in my life, I loved myself” struck a chord) her performance wasn’t at all award-worthy. With a showing that was up to par, she, along with the others, got overshadowed by the film’s lack of direction.
What on earth was this about? There’s not enough music to be a musical and only half of the song numbers made an impact. The film hit a peak when Rita called out all of the backhanded, sketchy donors at a fundraiser via song, but there were too many lows to go with it (like the awkward song in Bangkok). If Gascón was supposed to be the principal, we should’ve seen more of her. Saldaña dominated the screen, would step back, and then be brought in again. Just as Emilia is starting to show real emotion and bold, misplaced temerity, we’re forced two steps back with a pivot. Characters are brought in without any background (Epifanía) and given no real purpose (wasteful in an aggressive Game of Thrones manner). On the contrary, the confrontation between Gomez and Gascón coupled with the kids was great cinema that should’ve been built upon. Unfortunately, the film couldn’t gain any ground without tripping over itself.
Emilia Pérez gets a 6.5 out of 10. It was bold in its efforts to navigate unchartered territory but it could’ve been and should’ve been better. After going from a man leading a cartel to a woman leading an NGO, she attempts to cleanse the sins of their past with good deeds at the risk of losing a family. The film drags with it a handful of songs (none strong enough to be remembered or hummed down the street) and will end up in that great abyss known as the Netflix library. For a film that spanned 132 minutes, it needed to be better.
Emilia Pérez will be in theaters today, Nov. 1, and will arrive on Netflix on Nov. 13.
-Jon Jones
Photos: Courtesy of Netflix