As we approach awards season, Emilia Perez, the new film from director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, The Sisters Brothers), will hope its joyful and jagged tale rightly captures the imagination of judges.
Set in Mexico City, Zoe Saldaña plays Rita, a brilliant but frustrated lawyer working to keep the guilty from prison. Feared cartel leader Juan (Karla Sofía Gascón) enlists her to organise her gender transition in secret, faking her death in order to start a new life. Rita takes the job to give herself a new start, making the arrangements and lying to the mobster’s wife (Selena Gomez), who believes her partner really is dead.
At its heart, Emilia Perez is a celebration, wrapped in audacious colour and musical numbers, leaping from one genre to the next as it opens up a vivid world for the viewer.
It’s a film that defies comparison, making serious statements about social change one moment, then devoting a whole song to vaginoplasty in the next. Its packed narrative is both a blessing and a curse, with so many plotlines spinning at once that some are inevitably left behind.
Gascón is wonderful in the title role, despite not appearing as her true self, Emilia, until some way through the film (she plays the character both pre- and post-transition). While the script glosses over some practical elements of the trans story, the actress embodies the emotional power of seeing yourself for the first time. Scenes such as saying her chosen name out loud give some personal weight to the character, while never forgetting that she’s a former crime lord. It’s particularly riveting to see the transition of someone later in life, told by someone who has lived that experience (Gascón came out publicly in 2018, age 46).
Similarly, Saldaña enlivens a character with relatively straightforward objectives, throwing herself into the music with abandon. Gomez, sadly, isn’t quite as impactful, suffering from both comparison to her co-stars and a subplot that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Her singing is impressive but she remains most notable for her celebrity.
Still, Emilia Perez is an often overwhelming experience, and in its best moments is absolutely joyful. It may not hit every note but it shows what exciting stories can be told when we widen the scope of who is allowed to speak.