Movie Review: ‘Emilia Pérez’

Director: Jacques Audiard

Cast: Zoë Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascó, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, Mark Ivnair, Édgar Ramírez

Plot: A lawyer in Mexico is recruited by the leader of a cartel to help them secretly undergo gender-affirming surgery and fake their death so they can live as a woman. Years later, the lawyer is approached by the newly named Emilia Pérez to get them back in touch with her children.

Review: Regular readers of this site may have noted that my writing has been on the non-existent side of late. Sorry about that, but I’ve developed a problem with the joints in my fingers. It’s been difficult to find the motivation to give opinions on pop culture when it causes physical pain and discomfort.

But then you watch a widely discussed film and need to write out your thoughts in order to process them. Emilia Pérez has become a part of the discourse following a massive sweep of 13 Oscar nominations in spite of many audience members having little good to say about it. A fair number of critics have given perfect scores, while reports of mass walk-outs in Mexican cinemas are making headlines. Rather than base my opinion on the out-of-context clips circulating social media, it’s time to watch it ourself.

This movie is difficult to summarise – and we’ll come back to why – without laying out the whole plot. Rita (Saldaña) lives in Mexico City and in unhappy with her role as a lawyer, often working against her morals and has little personal life to give her joy. When she’s given an anonymous offer, she’s intrigued enough to look into it. Meeting with Juan ‘Manitas’ Del Monte (Gascón), Rita is offered a massive sum of money to help the cartel kingpin to begin a new life as Emilia Pérez. This will involve faking their death and leaving behind his wife Jessi (Gomez) and children.

Jumping ahead six years, a wealthy Rita is again approached by Emilia Pérez with a new offer. Pérez wishes to be reunited with her children. In order to do this, she poses as her own, undiscussed sister, an Aunt looking to care for her family. Jessi does not recognise her former husband, and is unhappy with this arrangement, whilst her sons bond with this familiar figure. Jessi pursues a relationship with a cartel member she used to cheat on her husband with, while Rita and Emilia begin a non-profit organisation to help families find out what happened to missing loved ones taken by the cartel.

Now that may seem like a barebones overview of the plot, but there isn’t a lot to flesh it out between these big plot moments. This is one of the major anchors weighing this film down, as it could have been a character piece, but there’s nothing to them beyond what they tell us in dialogue. Take the through-line of Emilia Pérez leaving behind their life as the leader of a powerful crime empire and eventually forming a charity to repair the damage done by the cartels. We never see anything they do as a cartel leader. The first scene with them is the one where they explain that they want to change their gender, the next where we meet their wife, and then we jump ahead six years where they reappear with their new offer. There’s very, very little to any of these characters, and it often feels as though they don’t exist outside of the scenes we see.

On the other hand, this is a musical and that provides us with an opportunity for the characters to express themselves through the non-diegetic musical numbers. You’d think that, but that is rarely the case in Emilia Pérez, as most of the lyrics seems to be dialogue just sung out loud. This is most notable in the most circulated scene of a doctor singing an explanation of the gender-confirming surgery. Most of the songs kinda blend together, they all sound pretty similar and none of them have you tapping your feet. Don’t expect big public singalongs like Wicked.

Eventually all the characters and their conflicts come to a head with a big, gun shooting finale that finishes with a car crash that feels as though it could have been in The Simpsons. For a movie with such overwrought emotional ballads, it left us feeling empty. There’s plenty of flashy sequences, some of which are creative ways to tell a story through spotlight effects and editing, but there’s no substance beneath it (unlike The Substance, and that was not planned out). All the flash in the world cannot make up for a lack of heart at the centre of the film.

Then we get to all the sticky controversy regarding LGBTQIA+ and Mexican representation. Not being a member of either group, it’s not my place to pass judgement as to the accuracy of these depictions. I have seen it noted that Selena Gomez has puts on a bad accent for her role…but I wouldn’t know having met very few Mexican people in Australia. The representation of a trans woman does ring pretty hollow, as it does little to explore the experience. If Emilia Pérez had undergone facial reconstruction to start a new life, little in the script would need to have changed. It feels as though an opportunity to explore this life experience is ignored for a casting gimmick, which is a mean thing to assume of the film-makers. Some of it gets downright uncomfortable, since the titular trans woman is characterised as dishonest and conniving. Then it gets real weird when Emilia’s son recognises her from her smell of guacamole.

This is now one of the most nominated movies in Oscar history, and we are scratching our heads, especially with such well put together dramas like Challengers being com. This is a messy film trying desperately to provoke an emotional response in a very cold way. Perhaps this is an effort by the Academy to demonstrate that they are progressive enough to recognise a movie about a trans cartel leader, but we hope that it goes home empty handed.

Rating: THREE out of TEN