‘Emilia Pérez’: Jacque Audiard’s Audacious Musical Is an Operatic Saga of Crime, Passion and Identity

Alci Rengifo

Here is one of those wild cinematic gestures that almost forces the viewer to either love it or hate it. Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez” nearly defies description. It’s an opera about modern Mexico, cartel violence and trans identity. It’s also a feverish reflection on love, inner contradictions, corruption and tragic, grandiose choices. The French auteur Audiard, whose films are foremost about lives on the edge, proves here that despite the arid state of contemporary cinema, where franchises seem to set the course, a director can still work with a studio like Netflix to experiment without restraint. Some critics have already been conflicted in assessing the film’s effect when it comes to the music, yet it all comes together as gloriously surreal expressiveness.

Zoe Saldaña leads the opus as Rita Moro Castro, a Mexico City lawyer feeling hopeless in a country where femicides are constant and a misogynist system refuses to change or bring any real justice. She is soon approached by Manitas (Karla Sofía Gascón), a drug lord with a surprising request. He will make Rita rich if she can arrange for him to undergo a sex change operation, keep it discreet and arrange for their disappearance. Already feeling cynical about the system, Rita agrees and helps Manitas make all the proper arrangements. She also makes sure Manitas’ wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez), and their two children are taken care of and moved to Switzerland. Four years later Rita is rubbing elbows with elites in London when an enigmatic Mexican woman introduces herself. She is Emilia Pérez, who was once Manitas, now living as the woman she always knew herself to be. Emilia also invites Rita to come back to Mexico City, for the next chapter in their bond.

“Emilia Pérez” features much of Audiard’s trademark style while aiming for even more inventive heights. It’s one of those strange experiences like Leo Carax’s “Annette,” where it is a musical or opera breaking the very rules of the genre. The music isn’t meant to be sing-along numbers but haunting, fierce evocations of the narrative. While the story is Mexican, the source material is a French novel by Boris Razon, “Écoute.” Audiard filmed on Paris soundstages, though the environment feels very authentic. Like Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “Santa Sangre,” this is a Mexico City that is more of a dreamscape, still brimming with grit, and not a documentary. The songs by French singer Camile, to a score by Clement Ducol, flow in and out of the dialogue as Rita wanders through Mexico City’s streets, watching families clamor for their disappeared loved ones in the ongoing drug war. Some numbers are surreal bliss, like a hospital song, “La Vaginoplastia,” where doctors and staff swirl while describing the procedure Manitas desires so much.

When Rita meets Emilia, the narrative grows even more complex into a melodrama seething with emotion. Emilia may be content with her identity, but she also wants to be close to her children, so she arranges for Jessi and the kids to move in with her in a lavish Mexico City home, posing as Manitas’ cousin. There is a Pedro Almodovar feel to these sections as Jessi is kept in the dark over Emilia’s previous identity. The screenplay by Audiard then becomes a set of moral dilemmas. Should Rita tell Jessi the truth? Emilia also feels the guilt of her past crimes when confronting the reality of the thousands of missing people, many because of the violence she partook in as Manitas. In the tradition of grand opera, the stakes only go higher as Emilia starts a foundation to help families of the disappeared. Jessi grows more desperate and takes on a new lover (Edgar Ramirez), which triggers pangs of envy in Emilia. Is the old drug lord really gone for good? Jealousy will make the old monster resurface. 

Movies like these are not often made anymore. Zoe Saldaña brings presence to her role, which requires intricate singing and dancing (check out the moment Rita dances around a dinner party, mocking Mexico’s hypocritical elite). Karla Sofía Gascón, who made history at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for being the first openly trans actor to win the Best Actress award, is a force of nature, full of intelligence with hints of violence. They wonderfully bring to life the ideas of the screenplay, which pose the challenging questions of the nature of identity. Manitas certainly had the right to be who they always felt to be inside, yet he was a criminal, and now as Emilia, she finds it hard to shake off that side of her DNA. Even when Audiard throws one audacious development after another, mixing opera, rock and hints of Mexican pop, the characters remain ever so sharply in focus. 

A passionate love affair ensues when Emilia meets the wife of a disappeared, abusive husband, while Rita laments being 40 without having the chance to raise her own family. These are smaller, emotionally potent details in a story that is grandiose, yet never too cluttered. The cinematography by Paul Guilhaume is alive and full of color, pulsating with a haunting eeriness at times. Audiard has always specialized in capturing life’s surreal turns in films like “A Prophet,” “Rust  and Bone” and “Read My Lips.” With “Emilia Pérez,” he proves there are many more horizons to explore as an artist. The landscape of cinema has felt so dry that even with this film’s few blemishes, as when the story can get overcooked, we are grateful someone is still making projects that feel so new. A French auteur telling a Mexican story in Spanish, diving into crime, melodrama and sexual identity is a welcome rarity indeed. “Emilia Pérez” runs 2 hours and 12 minutes, yet we wouldn’t mind if it sang and danced for a bit longer.

“Emilia Pérez” begins streaming Nov. 13 on Netflix.