Movie Review – Emilia Perez
Principal Cast : Karla Sofia Gascon, Zoe Saldana, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, Edgar Ramirez, Mark Ivanir, Eduardo Aladro, Emiliano Hasan, Gael Murguia-Fur, Tirso Pietriga.
Synopsis: Emilia Pérez follows four remarkable women in Mexico, each pursuing their own happiness. Cartel leader Emilia enlists Rita, an unappreciated lawyer, to help fake her death so that she can finally live authentically as her true self.
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I’m not going to make you scroll through several paragraphs of faffing critique before giving you the good stuff. With Emilia Perez, I’m comfortable suggesting it’s easily one of the worst Best Picture Nominees I’ve seen, perhaps since the Oscar win for Crash in 2005, the last time I remember thinking the film that didn’t deserve to win the most, won the most. Emilia Perez, a Latino musical crime drama boasting the first opening transgender actress to snag a Leading Actress nomination for Karla Sofia Gascon, in the title role, is a crushingly disappointing movie in almost every respect save one, and even then I’m unconvinced of its sincerity. The film is based on a novel by Boris Razon entitled “Ecoute”, and follows a Mexican cartel kingpin who seeks to escape his life of crime by becoming a woman, and how upon claiming her new life begins to correct the sins of her past. A musical about a trans woman who was once a legendarily feared cartel boss making a run for it through gender affirmative care? Um, okay? As much as I have a problem with Emilia Perez‘ story being enormously stereotypical to Latino people everywhere, I also had a problem rooting a trans journey within the context of a mobster – had Marlon Brando done something similar in Coppola’s masterpiece we’d be in a different stage of trans discourse today, I think! – and this darker element brings a heavy tone to the film that cruels its inherently uplifting purpose.
Trans actress Karla Gascon plays the dual role of cartel boss Juan “Manitas” Del Monte, a ruthless crime kingpin based in Mexico City, who seeks a way out of his life through a transition to becoming a woman. He recruits downtrodden lawyer Rita Castro (Zoe Saldana) to arrange the various surgeries, transport and illicit, shadowy investigations into making this happen, as well as getting Manitas’ family – wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and their two children – out of the country safely. Upon transitioning into the female identity of Emilia Perez, and becoming a benevolent philanthropist helping grieving families locate the remains of missing loved ones (implied they are all victims of Manitas, although not explicitly stated), Emilia and Rita form a strong team as the former cartel boss goes about trying to clear the stains from history’s copybook.
So there’s several problems I had with Emilia Perez, none moreso than the inexplicable decision to make this dark, sour film a musical. Inexcusably, none of the songs within the two hour runtime are memorable, at least to me, and several ditties composed by director Jacques Audiard are truly risible as far as lyrics go. As hard as it is to fathom, taking a serious edginess to the film and then having these low, sour characters break out into song, rap or spoken word songs jars badly against our expectations of what a musical should be. Serious themes can be woven into a musical, do not mistake me for suggesting they can’t be, but Audiard fumbles the ball badly here, with a monotone, crumbling, at-times bizarre libretto that doesn’t translate well at all – I jest somewhat, given the majority of the film is in Spanish, but the underpinning subtext of the songs and accompanying dialogue just don’t work against the clumsily inserted musical numbers. By taking a potentially uplifting trans story and turning it into a criminal escaping justice (successfully, to a point) by using gender swapping as a methodology, it sits awkwardly in today’s politically correct world as a real taciturn narrative with which to backstop this point. I get that it’s all supposed to be uplifting somehow, perhaps, but it isn’t. Maybe it got lost in translation, but Emilia Perez’ underlying themes and plot points made me uncomfortable not just for myself but those involved on the screen.
I should caveat this (because I know some will misread this as a pointed barb against trans people) with the statement that I have nothing against trans people or the community whatsoever, but rather the way in which this film chose to depict them – to say nothing of how racially biased the film is towards Mexicans and Central Americans generally. Audiard is a French director making a Spanish-language film about a transgender main character, so one has to question his intimacy with both the content and the culture of which he seeks to present us: frankly, Emilia Perez really lives up to the statement online in which people suggest it’s “made by somebody who isn’t trans, with information a decade or two out of date”, and if that isn’t a damning indictment then what is? As little as I know about the trans community specifically, I’m unsurprised there’s been some criticism hurled the film’s way about it all.
In terms of the cast, and in spite of my misgivings with the material, everyone here commits to the project with passion. Zoe Saldana is terrific as Rita, the downtrodden lawyer who sees the money splashed by Del Monte as a lifesaving gift, while Cascon is great if somewhat uneven in the title role. Both performances feel authentic despite the cloying air of sentimentalised “look-at-how-modern-we-are” suffocating most of the movie. Selena Gomez is solid if unremarkable as Del Monte’s wife Jessi, who is unaware for most of the film her “dead” husband has been living alongside her as a female presenting “distant relative”, and minor roles to Edgar Ramirez and Mark Ivanir offer nothing more than superficiality to the driving central plot. I guess for me the fear of Emilia’s discovery – her outing as a former cartel boss after all the money and time spent changing her appearance – was the singular tension point here, and a multitude of possible dramatic subplots seemed unaccounted for; like, the justice for all Perez’ former victims before her transition, as well as a sense of ethical angst regarding using gender reassignment surgeries to effectively escape prosecution. As much as I wanted to like Emilia as a character, the nagging sense that barely thirty minutes beforehand she was a possible mass-murderer never escaped my mind, and it coloured my empathy for her transition. This colouring is what soured me on the film as a whole, in truth: the motivation for a huge cartel boss to up stumps and turn into a woman wasn’t strong enough to carry the story across two hours and songs, and it looked like simply a way to avoid paying for their crimes. That isn’t what the trans community is all about, in my opinion (please, let me know in the comments if you think I’m wrong!) and as a result the film felt clogged by unyielding criminality and darkness.
Emilia Perez is a difficult film to enjoy, and I didn’t. I thought it was an incredibly disappointing feature film, a bastardised celebration of transgender themes mixed with Mexican crime and Zoe Saldana trying her damndest to out-Grande Ariana Grande. For me, Emilia Perez is pushed well into the shadow cast by Wicked Part 1, the other musical film nominated for Best Picture in 2024, and I found myself thoroughly crushed by the experience. I’m not purposely angry about the film’s problematic representation – the biases, stereotypes and gender issues at play here are better discussed by more intellectual types than I – but I really thought it was wholly a waste of time. Confusing and ill-considered, I am aghast at how the Academy found itself nominating this for Best Picture. Skip it.
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