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You take yourself with you
A musical by a quirky French director about a Mexican cartel boss who wants a sex-change operation so he can be a woman. If you think that storyline is not for you, so did we—until we saw “Emilia Pérez.”
Trans actress Karla Sofía Gascón makes a fearsome (even while smiling) cartel boss. Right, Manitas.
The opening scenes in this widely nominated and award-winning film follow a lawyer, Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldaña), who castigates herself—in song—for successfully defending a man who has killed his wife, claiming it was suicide. Mexico itself, she intones, is “violence, love, death, a suffering country.” Within a few hours, Rita will sell her services, as enabler, counselor, and eventually mediator, to the feared and fearsome-looking cartel boss, Manitas. What Manitas wants is a sex-change operation, and he wants Rita to facilitate it. Money no object. “I don’t understand,” says Rita, “do you want a new life or a new gender?” “Is there a difference?” responds Manitas.
“I don’t understand,” says Rita, “do you want a new life or a new gender?” “Is there a difference?” responds Manitas.
After some song-and-dance numbers involving plastic surgeons around the world, including one who can’t sing a note, Manitas emerges from surgery as Emilia Pérez (Karla Sofía Gascón, who is also Manitas). Emilia seems to have left the cartel world behind; she starts a foundation, La Lucecita (“The Little Light”) to locate the remains of the “desaparecidos”—the disappeared—many of whom her prior self helped to their unmarked graves. The song Rita sings for a La Lucecita fund-raising gala—a showcase for Saldaña’s dancing—reminds us that Emilia has not fully distanced herself from Manitas’ violent, corrupt past.
Rita and Emilia - once Manitas - make an interesting, even parallel duo.
It's Emilia (Gascón, right) who has hired Rita (Saldaña)
to do her bidding, even to negotiate in the drug cartel underworld.
The film’s dominant theme of transformation is evocatively played out in the script and direction of French auteur Jacques Audiard, recognized in his homeland for his thrillers. Manitas becomes a woman—apparently fully comfortable and at peace in her new identity—but as Emilia she remains haunted and shaped by her prior life. She uses La Lucecita in an attempt to atone for her past actions, and she discovers she misses the children left behind. Emilia enlists Rita to bring those children and her ex-wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) to her, fashioning herself as a distant cousin of Manitas. The past inhabits the present. Emilia can’t live without her children, nor can she entirely abandon the power she had as a thug and kingpin. Emilia/Manitas is a metaphor for those who may want to transform their lives. As Alain de Botton memorably wrote about travel: “you take yourself with you.”
The musical numbers allow the audience space to breathe, to take in the story, even to relax.
“Emilia Pérez” is an intriguing film, full of unexpected fits and starts, of multiple themes—transformation, male violence, parental love--running concurrently, a commentary on the nature of humanity. It uses its musical format to distance “our heroine” from his worst self, from the atrocities committed by humankind, and to distance the viewer from the male violence that underscores the film. The musical numbers also permit Rita to function as the film’s narrator/observer, rather than as a full protagonist, and to allow the audience space to breathe, to take in the story, even to relax.
Selena Gomez, the billionaire actress, singer and entrepreneur, is a delightful third wheel.
Zoe Saldaña captures the viewer's attention in Rita's magnificent
song and dance number, in which she identifies
all the corrupt Mexican politicians in the audience.
It could be problematic to have three charismatic characters occupy the screen, but Audiard and Gascón maintain Emilia as our main focus. Gascón, now a trans actress, is captivating and empathetic as Emilia. Saldaña (“Avatar”[2009] and “Guardians of the “Galaxy” series) is compelling in her go-between role, though Rita’s story of transition, while intended to be analogous to that of Emilia, doesn’t have the same weight. When Rita describes her profession as “a sewer,” her outward disdain doesn’t ring true; she enjoys the money, the power—and the challenges—too much. Like Emilia, Rita is audacious on the outside, and sometimes conflicted on the inside. Though they are often in parallel, Saldaña never eclipses Gascón emotionally. Gomez, the billionaire actress, singer and entrepreneur, is a delightful third wheel, a whimsical, tough, chippy beauty whose signature song, “I love myself as I am,” expands the focus on identity. These three women—two American and one Spanish, all three playing Mexicans—manage not to steal scenes from each other, rather enhancing the film with their complementary talents. A superb ensemble.
Gascón's Emilia, left, is a bit too beatific.
One can point to what doesn’t quite work in this unusual and fascinating mélange of genres. Emilia sings at one point that she is “Half he, half she/ Half dad, half aunt/ Half rich, half poor/ Half boss, half queen/ Half there, half here.” In fact, until she decides she has to bring her children back into her life, she seems perfectly at ease with the woman she has become. The redemption story of Manitas/Emilia, in which her charitable endeavors presumably offset the deaths Manitas had facilitated, lacks balance. One could argue as well that Emilia’s good-natured femininity is somewhat overdone, in that one would expect Manitas’ hard edge to emerge periodically (but it doesn’t—indeed, it’s his soft side, his fondness for his children, that filters through). If the audience were exposed to the true horror of Manitas’ reign of terror as drug kingpin, one would have trouble identifying with Emilia’s transformed self.
More than a musical about a trans former cartel boss, “Emilia Pérez” keeps viewers on their toes while breaking new cinematic ground. It deserves to be seen and appreciated for its creativity, its exploration of morality, and for the joy of the unexpected that it brings to the screen.
She says: Maybe it’s because my expectations were so low, but I was immediately drawn into this—at times almost laughable—musical. Somehow Audiard has combined lofty values and—when one least expects it—singing and dancing.
He says: Having expected something like a frenetic, cast-of-thousands version of “West Side Story,” updated for today’s gender obsessions, I was pleasantly surprised.
Date: 2024
Director: Jacques Audiard
Starring: Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez
Countries: France (production), Spanish screenplay, filmed in Mexico City
Language: Spanish, English, French
Runtime: 132 minutes
Other Awards: 77 wins, including the Cannes Jury Prize and Ensemble Cast and 189 other nominations, including 11 BAFTAs
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