Emilia Perez

Emilia Perez is a gritty musical in the vein of Sergio Leone, a fearless fever dream in the spirit of Nicholas Refn’s Too Old To Die Young meets the work of Baz Luhrman. It is the 10th feature film in the career of French filmmaker Jacques Audiard. Like his other films—Read My Lips (2002), The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005), A Prophet (2009), and The Sister’s Brother (2018), to name a few—it’s a genre film that combines elements of a neo-Spaghetti western, a musical, and the gritty crime genre. It’s also about gender identity, redemption, transcendence, and self-healing.

The film begins what appears to be a crime drama. A sharp attorney, Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldaña), who often goes against her own conscience, argues the death of a celebrity’s wife as a suicide. She wins the case, but she ends up receiving an anonymous phone call where she is hauled off by a group of goons that end up taking her to see a powerful cartel kingpin named Juan “Manitas” Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón), who expresses her desire to covertly undergo gender affirming surgery, where she can be the person she was truly born to be as her new alias is the title character of Emelia Perez.

Courtesy Netflix

This leads Rita traveling across the world, doing research, getting high sums of great money in finding the best doctors globally, Rita ends up finding a renowned surgeon who agrees to perform the surgery on Mantias, in which Mantias fakes his own life, and begins a new one as Emilia Perez. With that, we learn that Mantia’s has two children and a wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez) who are relocated to Switzerland, so they stay protected from other cartels. Mantias transitions into Emali and begins a new life.

She returns back to Mexico under a new identity, a new true self, where she explains she endured body dysphoria. She also invites her children and Jessi back to home, in which she claims to be the aunt of Mantias. There are many beautifully staged songs and dance numbers that hold a lot of sorrow, melancholy, and sensation. Including one moment where Emila’s daughter sings Papa, where she describes the memories and smells that she has of her father. It’s another instance of the versatile range Audiard holds for his style and characters. He has transcended genre many times, and Emilia Perez continues to deliver a stylish musical that has so much evocative atmosphere and a narrative to his film that is undeniably compelling.

Courtesy Netflix

Every woman holds a stake in wanting to move on with their lives. With regret, Emelia ends up starting up a non-profit to help the families find their missing family members who were more than likely killed by drug cartels. Emelia joins forces with Rita, and together they begin to find a greater purpose to their encounter. Also, Emelia still holds a deep love and affection for Jessi, she is the mother of her children after all. It’s hard for her to accept her ex-wife being engaged to another man (who is also ruthless) as she attempts to live a new life.  In the final act, it unfolds like a Shakespearian play. It continues to explore what it means to be human, how it explores redemption, and everything comes to an explosive climax with many majestic moments that are vibrant and powerful.

In fact, most of Emilia Perez is energetic and powerful, utilizing the genre tropes of a musical, a crime drama, and a neo-spaghetti western, but always feeling refreshingly singular at the same time. It engages, empathizes, and ponders. The trio of Zoe Saldana, Karla Sofia Gascon, and Selena Gomez all play these women with a gathered-up melancholy held with regrets, hopes, and atonement. Perhaps that has always been the power of the musical. They have mostly always held joy with sadness. Best of all, the film never feels hurried. The audience allows the emotions with the music to sink in, and it allows the audience to process. It’s quite an engrossing musical, one that is gritty, spontaneous, and sweeping.

EMILIA PEREZ is now playing in limited theaters. It will be available to stream on NETFLIX on November 13th