“If you listen. You accept.”
Jacques Audiard’s genre mixing musical rises from the streets of Mexico with a blistering rage. Sinners, saints, and martyrs merge in a struggle for salvation – a moment which will define their souls – but the soul is a complicated proposition. In a place where corruption is covered systemically and through the auspices of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ controlled via power (the government, the media, the church, the cartels) Audiard’s film begs the question of what is a true penitent? How does one fundamentally break from circular and perpetual violence?
Rita Moro Castro (Zoe Saldaña) is a defence lawyer in Mexico City. She’s brilliant but under appreciated. Born in the Dominican Republic, Rita is seen as secondary because she is Black. It doesn’t matter that it is her words being spoken by her less capable boss, she will never be given credit for them. Perhaps she also doesn’t want the credit as she crafts arguments designed to free the guilty. A man who murdered his wife in cold blood is ‘protected’ and despite all evidence that his wife did not commit suicide, Rita is tasked with the closing argument – one that forms the first musical performance ‘El Alegato’ (‘The Plea’).
Exhausted, poor, overworked, and already compromised via her ‘official’ duties as a lawyer, Rita gets a mysterious phone call. An assignment she can undertake, and she will be rich. Money is freedom so she goes to the rendezvous point and is taken from the street, a hood placed over her head, and into the world of cartel kingpin Juan “Manitas” Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón).
Manitas asks Rita if she knows who he is. She responds of course – Manitas is a powerful Narco with unlimited funds and influence within the government. What Manitas wants from Rita is unexpected: he wants her to find a surgeon for him to undergo gender affirmation surgery outside of Mexico and America. Manitas wants to be what she has always been – a woman. To escape from the body which trapped her is to live instead of heading consistently into death. Rita flies around the world meeting different surgeons at gender affirmation clinics. The one she finally decides must meet with Manitas is Dr. Wasserman (Mark Ivanir) whose initial scepticism about what he can change as a plastic surgeon – the body but not the soul – both Rita and Manitas put to rest. Manitas claims that it was her authentic female identity that made her a more ruthless cartel leader. If she can break out her bodily prison, there will be no more Manitas. Manitas regrets leaving behind wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and sons Angel and Diego but has been planning for the surgery for years and believes they will be safe with the abundant money and continued Sicario and cartel protection.
Manitas goes to Israel for surgery. The sheer euphoria she feels as she moves a mirror down her body to see her vagina is elegantly captured by Paul Guilhaume’s camera – previously working in near frenetic motion. As she recovers, she emerges as Emilia Pérez, Manitas considered in all ways dead (officially by the police and government, and as an identity).
Five years later Emilia Pérez makes herself known to Rita who is now working in London. Rita fears Emilia has come to kill her as the last remaining witness (apart from Wasserman) to who Emilia once was. Emilia instead speaks of how it is not chance that they she has found Rita – she is there to thank her for making her life possible and to ask for her assistance once more. Emilia misses her Jessi and her sons and wants to return to Mexico as a relative of Manitas and bring Jessi and the boys back from Switzerland where they were hidden away for their safety. However, once back in Mexico will Emilia be able to be the person she believes she is? Or is there something dark nestled within her that even a new and beautiful love affair with Epifanía (Adriana Paz) and creating La Luceita (The Little Light) an NGO which helps to find the remains of people “disappeared” by cartels, cannot soothe and cover?
Audiard’s musical doesn’t fall under strict “musical” rules. Initially conceived as a four-act opera with libretto, the work is akin to Leos Carax’s Annette in terms of how it is staged. The score written by Clément Ducol and the performed numbers by French musician and actor, Camille switches up musical styles as much as Audiard’s work plays with genre conventions. Part crime thriller, part telenovela, part investigation into manifest destiny, part excortication of the reality of corruption via Narco controlled politics, and part opportunity to highlight those who are lost to violence – Audiard’s film is a risky undertaking.
The risks don’t always pay off. Despite Selena Gomez being a formidable musical talent, her character, Jessi, is somewhat sidelined to be a woman who loves the wrong men. Jessi adored Manitas (who became involved with her when she was very young). Her relationship with Gustavo Brun (Edgar Ramírez) should be her choosing for herself as an adult not being thrown into another gilded cage, but it becomes corrupted. Selena Gomez gives a brilliant dramatic performance, but the musical focus tends to be on Zoe Saldaña and Karla Sofía Gascón; neither of whom have her vocal precision and experience.
In effect it is Zoe Saldaña’s Rita who holds the film together. Rita’s performance of ‘El Mal’ (‘The Evil’) at the charity benefit for La Luceita is one of the strongest set pieces in Emilia Pérez and where Damien Jalet’s choreography shines. The anger of the lyrics summarises Rita’s reason for leaving Mexico and her decision to stay and work with Emilia at La Luceita. Rita is as much Emilia’s conscience as she is her friend, and when Emilia finds herself lost within the darker side of her ‘half’ life – half papa, half aunt, half kingpin, half queen, half there, half here – it is Rita who does everything she can to pull her back to the light.
Karla Sofía Gascón’s dual performance as Manitas and Emilia is superb. Mantias and Emilia are driven by desire and control. Manitas sings that all they want is to love ‘her’ – the woman they have always been. And then later as Emilia – her self – to be also loved by others. Yet, Emilia can’t help herself when it comes to Jessi reverting to a dominant mode and using punishment and fear over the love she promised she felt.
Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez is, as Rita sings, about Mexico; “Let's talk about our dead, let's talk about our shadows. When we talk about violence, let's talk from the heart.” It is also about the inescapable parts of oneself. Manitas’ crimes would unlikely be prosecuted in the justice system. Emilia is not a complete penitent, and her rebirth does not wipe any slate clean; but what La Luceita does is to allow for closure – “To forgive and to be forgiven.”
Passionately performed with Zoe Saldaña returning to her roots as a dancer, producing her most sophisticated and precise characterisation of her career thus far. Audiard takes a small section of a novel and turns it into a cinematic telenovela and something not quite definable. Tragic, trashy, philosophical, political, euphoric, comic, and blazing out in glory, Emilia Pérez is (soap)opera deluxe.
Director: Jacques Audiard
Cast: Karla Sofia Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez
Writers: Jaques Audiard, (in collaboration with Thomas Bidegain, Nicolas Livecchi, Léa Mysius, based on the novel by Boris Razon)
Producers: Jacques Audiard, Pascal Caucheteux, Valérie Schermann, Anthony Vaccarello
Music: Camille Clément Ducol
Cinematography: Paul GUilhaume
Editing: Juliette Welfling
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