After getting some award recognition at the Cannes Film Festival in May this year, the passionate film, Emilia Perez has been generating significant buzz for both Hollywood elite and film lovers. Immediately after watching this, a friend of mine walked by me and said, "That was wild." And that's the best word (wild) to encapsulate this mainly Spanish language film.
Latin American actress Zoe Saldana (Avatar: The Way of Water, 2022) plays an overworked lawyer in Mexico City who accepts a lucrative offer from the gangster of a drug cartel to help fake the gangster's death and arrange the extensive surgeries so the gangster can live authentically as a transgender woman (named Emilia Perez). Years after the successful surgery, Emilia crosses paths with her lawyer friend for another request: to be reunited with her spouse and children.
French director Jacques Audiard (Paris, 13th District, 2021) was initially inspired to create this film when reading the 2018 novel, Listen by French writer Boris Razon. In one chapter of this novel, a drug trafficker dreams of changing his identity. Another reason this film has received lots of buzz is the title character is played by a transgender actress. Karla Sofia Gascon is from Spain, and Emilia Perez is her first film as a female actor since her gender transition was announced in 2018.
Although the gender transition is an important plot point of Emilia Perez, that's not really what this film is about. The transgender plot point functions more as a metaphor of redemption as the macho, violent, male gangster becomes a feminine, nurturing, woman leader for a non-profit organization. (This non-profit organization then introduces the work of healing the nationwide loss of hundreds of Mexican families who have suffered from the murderous operations of many drug cartels, thereby easily setting this fictional story against the background of a real-life crisis.) The journey of redemption, however, has some twists that bring out Emilia's dangerous masculine side.
Emilia Perez is a boldly unpredictable experience, because it combines so many different genres and moods. It's a nail-biting crime thriller, a character study of queer identity, a domestic family melodrama, and a musical. With such a huge mix of different ideas in a run time of two hours and 12 minutes, it's a serious miracle this film is not a chaotic disaster.
I wouldn't say this is a masterpiece, but it's definitely an ambitious cauldron of interesting themes that will get people talking. The commentary on gender as distinctly separate forces for good and evil is rich with meaning. And the triumph of transformation is not as simple as Emilia expects. As one doctor says in this film, "Surgery can fix skin and bones. It cannot fix the soul."
I was drawn into this world so easily (maybe because of the musical numbers), and I couldn't anticipate anything that would happen. The musical scenes draw viewers into the drama instead of taking them out, probably because so many of the songs are shot in intimate closeups or quiet voiceovers without the glittery flash of bright lights and large dance sequences. The musical touch on Emilia Perez is more akin to the experimental Annette (2021) and less like the more traditional West Side Story (2021).
The connective thread holding all this turmoil together is the devotedly grounded performances from Zoe Saldana and Karla Sofia Gascon. Both of them give tour de force performances with screaming, crying, singing, and speaking in both Spanish and English. In one of the songs, Zoe Saldana sings the phrase,
"Changing he body changes society.
Changing society changes the soul.
Changing the soul changes society.
Changing society changes it all."
I think that phrase is the thesis of this whole film. Transformation is essential to redemption. Transformation helps improve the world around us. But transformation requires sacrifice, and sometimes those sacrifices are too great.
This is not the movie of the year for me. So many themes are only lightly explored, and the pacing is sometimes awkwardly jerky. Presenting the Mexican culture through a transnational lens (a French director making a Spanish language film set in Mexico with non-Mexican cast members) obviously presents some cultural issues certain viewers cannot overlook. But every viewer has to give some appreciation to this film being so unique, audacious, and daring.
