Director: Jacques Audiard
Writer: Jacques Audiard
Stars: Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez
Synopsis: When a Mexican cartel leader kidnaps criminal lawyer Rita and hires her to help him become a woman, a journey begins for both characters that changes them both, taking them face to face with the very essence of the country in which they live.
What should a musical about a Mexican drug lord looking to become a woman look and sound like? Whatever your answer to that question is, think again: you are not prepared for the deliriously subversive, savagely fun ride Emilia Pérez is about to take you on.
Writer-director Jacques Audiard’s (Paris, 13th District) new film, presented in competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, takes place in Mexico City, where disillusioned lawyer Rita (Zoe Saldaña) is getting tired of helping criminals get away with murder. Rita knows that complying with her boss’s requests to do just that is the only way to survive in her corrupt country, but that doesn’t stop her from expressing all her frustration in a song. “¿De que hablamos hoy y ahora?” (“What are we talking about, today and now?”), she sings, highlighting the issues in Mexico’s criminal justice system, and we are mesmerized by a performance that’s as spectacular as the most grandiose Broadway show and yet retains the immediacy of an intimate theater play.
Just when we think we have Emilia Pérez all figured out, something else happens that subverts our expectations all over again. Suddenly, Rita is kidnapped and taken to infamous cartel leader Manitas (Karla Sofía Gascón), who has a request for her. “Yes,” Rita responds, before the man has even begun explaining what he wants – knowing all too well that, just like at her daily job, she doesn’t really have a choice. But Manitas’ next words take her by surprise. “I want to be a woman,” he states, matter of factly. And just like that, Rita realizes that there’s a lot she doesn’t know about the most feared gangster in Mexico City.
Soon, Rita leaves the constraints of her daily routine and starts traveling around the world, looking for the right clinic for her client, having been given access to Manitas’ unlimited resources. The more she learns about her new employer’s upcoming surgeries, the more excited she becomes, and it all culminates in a delirious, wildly liberating musical number that sets the tone for what’s to come. “Nanoplasty?,” asks a nurse, to which Rita enthusiastically answers, “Yes!”. “Vaginoplasty?” “Yes!”, “Laryngoplasty?” “Yes!”, “Chondrolaryngoplasty?” “YES!”
If you’re able to get on board with the madness, this is also a point when you’ll immediately fall in love with Emilia Pérez, a film that you, quite simply, won’t be able to take your eyes off of. The combination of perfectly timed routines that seem to take place almost by chance, Saldaña’s flawless delivery and physical acting, and infectious songs that blend musical conventions with the unmistakable vibe of mariachi music will have you dancing in your seat, as you eagerly anticipate the next scene of a movie that will take you to truly unpredictable places. And on top of this, the film is both hysterically funny and surprisingly poignant, depending on the scene.
Our protagonists’ real journeys effectively begin after the transition, when Manitas becomes Emilia Pérez. With her new identity comes a new sense of morality, since it was never her desire to be a gangster: she was born into that life. When we next meet her, years later in London, she has tracked down Rita again, to ask for her help one more time. Emilia needs Rita to help her move back to Mexico and reunite with her family, as she cannot live without her kids – only, her two children and her wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) think she’s dead, as “Manitas” had to die in order for Emilia to be born.
Together, the two women find a way to get both Emilia and her wife and kids in Mexico, but that means that her family cannot know who she really is. And so, Emilia hides her true self once again – this time, assuming the identity of a relative. This version of Emilia is generous and kindhearted: on top of welcoming them all into her family, she starts a charity with Rita to help families whose loved ones are among the many desaparecidos in Mexico – people who simply “disappeared” due to organized crime, which to this day could be as many as 100,000 – get closure. The paradox is that, back when she was Manitas, Emilia was herself responsible for these disappearances, which usually resulted in bodies to get rid of.
Is becoming the real you and deciding that you want to do good enough to cancel all the evil you’ve done in the past and grant you redemption? This is one of the questions Audiard and co-writers Thomas Bidegain, Nicolas Livecchi, and Léa Mysius ask in the film, and the answer is not so simple.
Emilia Pérez is ultimately a tragedy, but it’s a grandiose one that’s drenched in the culture in which it takes place. From the start, we are shown a society whose many sides often clash with one another. It’s a patriarchy where women are often voiceless and have to endure a great deal of violence, yet, at the same time, they are also the ones who hold everything together with their love, empathy, resilience, and, ultimately, hope. The fact that Manitas wants to become a woman encapsulates these very contradictions, making this an unequivocally Mexican tale – one that embodies the very essence of the country, both in narrative and form, and raises complex, even controversial questions.
“When you were born to strive and raised to kill, you’d better dance or die,” reads one of the film’s most poignant song lyrics, which perfectly sums up its protagonist. Emilia Pérez isn’t defined by heroes and villains, but by multilayered humans who are who they are because of the context in which they were raised. It’s no coincidence that the movie often feels like a soap opera, with its use of melodrama and abundance of dramatic twists, which aren’t usually associated with the crime thriller genre: Emilia Pérez is ultimately a snapshot of a country defined by its contradictions, and a cry for forgiveness within the chaos.
