EMILIA PÉREZ - Mark Reviews Movies

Emilia Pérez, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 31, 2024

The songs of a musical often break out when talking simply isn't enough to communicate the depth of emotion of a particular moment. The basic story of Emilia Pérez involves a cartel leader who finally decides to transition to a woman, after a lifetime of feeling out of place in her own body, and has to deal with the various personal and professional changes and repercussions that come with the decision. How else could these characters communicate the extent of the emotions here except through song?

That seems to be the logic of writer/director Jacques Audiard's film, which might have succeeded as a straightforward drama or the thriller it gradually becomes, but its existence as a musical, with numbers that veer from intimate scenes of talk-singing to full-on dance routines, means we're never sure what to expect from its tale. It's tough to argue that the songs elevate the material, even if some of them have a quiet or angry power that probably couldn't have been displayed in a more traditional approach, but the approach definitely makes the film narratively different and stylistically exciting.

It's entertaining, too, because this storytelling style allows Audiard to embrace the heightened drama of such an over-the-top story without making it seem that way. Maybe it's a contradictory way of thinking, but the musical angle helps to ground these characters and the increasingly unlikely direction of the plot. If the characters can break into song at any moment, it's not much of a curiosity when things go the way they do in this tale.

Our introduction to it is by way of Mexico City attorney Rita Moro Castro (Zoe Saldaña), who's disappointed with the current state and likely course of her career as part of a law firm that only seems to appreciate her ability to write statement for other lawyers to recite in court. The first song has her escaping the confines of her cramped apartment to pen a closing argument for a high-profile murder case, and as she lets out her frustrations, people parade past or surround her, echoing those resentments and regrets. The music doesn't just tell us how she's feeling. It's telling us that she feels this to the very core of her existence at the moment.

Shortly after, we meet the cartel head, who was born and has spent an entire life presenting as a man. This is a ruthless criminal, if the many rumors about the business are to be believed, and there's little reason to doubt them. When the cartel honcho calls Rita with an offer to make her rich for some side work, though, it's too tempting, even though the crime lord puts forth a not-too-subtle warning about what will happen to Rita if she learns of the job and doesn't accept or fails to accomplish the task. The threat somehow feels more sinister spoken in staccato to the exact rhythm of driving percussion on the soundtrack.

The cartel leader's proposal is that Rita will receive a couple million if she can find a clinic for gender reassignment treatment that will keep their client a complete secret. Rita does so, by way of a whirlwind tour through a facility where all of the procedures rhyme and a heart-to-heart with a doctor who's skeptical that this particular client could have a change of the soul, and that seems to be the end of that.

Four years later, though, Rita encounters the mysterious Emilia Pérez (Karla Sofia Gascón) via some mutual friends in London, and as they talk and sing a duet, the lights of the restaurant dim, leaving only their faces illuminated. Rita recognizes something in Emilia—in the eyes and in the attitude—and instantly fears that, as the only one who knows about the transition, her time has come. Instead, Emilia wants to be reunited Jessi (Selena Gomez) and the woman's two children—the family from Emilia's former life who, like everyone else, believe the cartel leader was killed.

This is already a lot of plotting, and we're only at the start of the first act, really, since everything with the transition is essentially a prologue to establish who everyone is, how things are set in motion, and what the conflict will be. It's about Emilia trying to be close to the family she left behind, even though Jessi has since moved forward with her life in hiding in Switzerland—and probably moved on from the marriage well before that, as we discover soon enough. It's also about whether a person can genuinely change, since Emilia still has a past she wants to forget and literally knows where the bodies are buried—or, at least, knows a bunch of people who know such information.

The melodrama of the complex domestic stuff plays out, then, against an even more complicated arrangement, as Emilia uses her knowledge of the criminal underworld to help the families of those who have disappeared to the cartels' illegal activity. There is the worthwhile question in wondering if Audiard is exploiting the complexities of being transgender and the tragedy of real-world violence for what amounts to a daring experiment in marrying something akin to social realism with an energetic musical.

There's also a point to be made, though, that the nature of this film as a musical adds an inherent degree of fantasy to it. We should take Emilia Pérez seriously, as an exploration of identity and if a person can evolve on a moral level and how activism can be used as a shield or a selfish form of atonement. To take it too seriously, though, might be to miss the bigger picture of its form, which pulls us into the larger-than-life emotions of these characters, their flaws, and their desires to find something better than what has been. If the film makes us feel anything, it has done its job well.

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