‘Emilia Pérez’ Movie Review: An Oscar Contender, This Is Not [Festival du Nouveau Cinéma 2024]
Jacques Audiard attempts to depict the tragic story of its titular character in Emilia Pérez, but the narrative/aesthetic results are constantly baffling and, more offensively, deeply transphobic.
I did not know what Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez was about, even if the chatter has been going on about its potential Awards buzz ever since its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. And who wouldn’t be enticed by the prospect of a modern-day musical with the effervescent talents of Zoë Saldaña and Selena Gomez at the forefront? More interestingly, Audiard is a director who has never repeated himself throughout his career, from his incredible The Beat That My Heart Skipped to his crime film A Prophet, leading us to his Western The Sisters Brothers and the Palme d’Or Winning Dheepan.
He’s never made the same film twice and has consistently reinvented his aesthetics based on what he deems necessary for his story to feel effective. Some of his movies have not been as well-received as others. Still, none of them were outright terrible, or at least had such vivid hatred from moviegoers as more eyes began to see what this allegedly potential awards contender had to offer. And some are right to say that Emilia Pérez has the opportunity to go all the way since it won the Jury Prize at Cannes, alongside the Best Actress Award for its three female leads.
Audiard immediately dazzles with flashy robocam work worthy of Lokesh Kanagaraj (perhaps he’s familiar with Vikram’s bravura pre-interval wedding setpiece) as he introduces us to Rita Moro Castro (Saldaña), an up-and-coming attorney making quite a reputation for herself, as it is implied in its vivid, mathematically precise opening musical number. While the choreography isn’t perfect, and the editing is frequently jumpy and never flows the rhythms of its songs written by Camille, it certainly grabs our attention and makes us wonder what this musical crime drama will be about.
It doesn’t take long for us to know what it will focus on, as Rita gets kidnapped by thugs who work for cartel leader Juan “Manitas” Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón). In an armored car, Manitas tells Rita of their plans to transition into a woman and is willing to give over $2 million to her if she can successfully find a doctor willing to operate and help her start a new life as her true self, Emilia Pérez. Little does Rita know that Manitas built a family of two children with wife Jessi (Selena Gomez), whom she meets after hiring Dr. Wasserman (Mark Ivanir) to perform the remainder of the transition.
The film then cuts to a few years later, where Emilia has left her past criminal life behind and reunites with Jessi and her two children, who do not recognize her. It’s there that the film begins to perpetuate increasingly transphobic stereotypes, with such a shallow-minded viewpoint of what transitioning actually is and how cishets eventually learn to accept them as who they are. Instead of coming clean on her transition, Emilia decides to hide it from her family and ‘kills’ Manitas, which will supposedly create some sort of conflict when Jessi begins to have a serious relationship with Gustavo (played by Édgar Ramirez, though it’s implied the two have had an affair for some time and had to wait five years to reunite together) but goes virtually nowhere.
Instead, she pretends to be Manitas’ long-lost relative, giving them a place to stay while the family gets back on their feet. Of course, this immediately recalls Chris Columbus’ Mrs. Doubtfire, but there’s something inherently insidious being depicted with Emilia using her trans identity as a means to fool people. This means plenty of scenes that involve deadnaming (and misgendering) the character used as an emotional anchor for ‘shocking’ revelations. And even if Gascón gives an impassioned, often soulful performance, one can’t help but feel offended that Audiard would reduce a trans actress to such dangerous, reactionary viewpoints on trans identity.
The most blatant example is when one of Emilia’s children says that her smell reminds him of their father because they share the same scent. However, one should know that after a transition, their physical smell also changes. If Audiard can’t get simple details correct, he will undoubtedly not give trans women the story they deserve to see depicted on screen, with empathy, compassion, and, most importantly, agency. Empathy does not necessarily mean representing them in the confines of an idealized version of what ‘proper representation’ means since this is subjective.
The ‘empathy’ here refers to making them feel like tangible human beings who deserve to exist in this society. For too long, (many, not all) cishet filmmakers have treated the act of transition with contempt and pity, scorning the characters for making their individual choices and far too frequently punishing them as a result. For example, Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl ends with the tragic death of Lili Elbe, after her transition (while based on a true story, Hooper frames this change as similar to a death sentence). Conversely, Emilia Pérez takes an even crueler direction and reaches levels of atrociousness the likes of which I had never imagined seeing on screen (though talking about this moment would mean spoiling crucial plot points that will not be revealed here).
This point of view is not only inherently ill-advised in the year of our lord 2024 but does little to no service to trans women who have, in recent years, reclaimed their narratives to craft (and see) trans stories that reflect not only their individuality as women (trans women are women. End of story. Thank you very much.) but their right to exist. No one should judge anyone for being who they are. Yet, this is the only thing Audiard spends doing in this 132-minute movie, and never humanizes the titular character, whether in her past or present life.
He has little to no empathy for Emilia. For example, a dolly zoom of her beginning to ‘crack’ and revert to Manitas after Jessi reveals her engagement with Gustavo to remind the audience that Emilia is not a woman is one of the film’s most reprehensible moments in a film full of reprehensible moments. Worse yet, he never allows her to accept herself as she is, longing for a chance to finally live a whole life as a woman after she spent most of her life following a path she did not want to stray on.
Instead, all he does is punish her, whether in her now distant relationship with Jessi or in the advocacy work she seemingly wants to do to help people find their lost relatives. This leads to a climax that wants to treat her story as one of tragedy and despair but is instead so insidiously exploitative it baffles that anyone who watches this with their own two eyes could even think this is a major awards contender poised to sweep the world when it depicts a story that continues to perpetuate stereotypes that recent trans stories have denounced.
Worse yet, none of the character relationships are developed. Beyond the money, the movie never gives us a compelling reason why Rita would ever want to work for Emilia after her transition. There was, of course, the reason for being frightened of the power she had as a cartel leader. However, there’s no justification for her to return to Mexico and continue working for Emilia after the operation.
This also begs the question of why Jessi does not put two and two together when Emilia hugs her children as only someone who knows them intimately could. Is she this clueless, or does her alcohol-deprived nights prevent her from seeing clearly? None of the relationships are implicitly defined through Audiard and cinematographer Paul Guilhaume’s rigid visual style that never interestingly depicts the story visually or musically.
Because, yes, this movie is also a musical. Its first half certainly has plenty of musical numbers, which teeter the line between baroque, expressionis fantasies, and darkly comedic sequences. But none of it is funny (most of it, again, incredibly feeble-minded, including one where doctors sing about “sex change operations”), and the structure gets repeatedly tiresome. It doesn’t help that the songs are entirely unmemorable, and the direction of musical numbers is lacking in any thrills and creativity. But as it progresses to a darker half, the music takes a backseat instead of fully committing itself to this aesthetic approach.
It's almost as if Audiard fears alienating his audience with the prospect of a musical. However, the insecure moviegoing public we live in today already despises them, so you’re better off doing one entirely than handholding them into thinking it’s a musical and giving up entirely in its back half. Instead of teetering on the edge of a musical with half-baked numbers that never serve the story or characters, you should just boldly assert yourself as a musical and accept your aesthetic as such. But Audiard doesn’t seem enthused by that prospect and never realizes anything tangible on screen, whether in the music, character relationships, or the dramatic feel of his picture.
The result is a profoundly misguided and bafflingly constructed film at best and a dangerously offensive one at worst, featuring an abhorrent, myopic viewpoint of trans identity, which sinks its narrative and performances into unimaginable lows. Gomez does some of the most appalling work of her career, a character trapped in one horrendous cliché after another, while Saldaña has no agency. Simply put, it’s the work of a simple-minded cishet man who thinks he knows more about women’s bodies and their identities than the ones who should be telling their stories. And there’s no world in which Emilia Pérez should be touted as a serious awards contender, let alone get nominated for anything.