Redemption stories come in a great many forms. Time loops stories utilize the constriction created by a repeated day(s) to force introspection and change, the loop broken in comedies (Groundhog Day), dramas (The Map of Tiny Perfect Things), and horror stories (Happy Death Day), only after amends are made and atonement is sought. Redemption is a thing that must be earned through hard-fought action, not passive reaction. Only then does absolution come and a chance at something new is born. To some degree, redemption is at the heart of writer/director Jacques Audiard’s (The Sisters Brothers; Rust and Bone) latest project, Emilia Pérez, written in collaboration with Léa Mysius (The Five Devils), Thomas Bidegain (The Sisters Brothers), and Nicolas Livecchi (Jeanne du Barry), based on Boris Razon’s novel Écoute, and featuring startling performances from Karla Sofía Gascón (We Are the Nobles), Zoe Saldaña (Star Trek), Selena Gomez (Only Murders in the Building), and Adriana Paz (Rudo & Cursi). Constructed as musical in which cinema is transformed into theater, Emilia Pérez is a visually rousing spectacle of spirit, but its executed narrative doesn’t seem to align with what it seeks to do, resulting in an experience that leaves one excruciatingly frustrated.
Zoe Saldaña as Rita Moro Castro in EMILIA PÉREZ. Photo Credit: Shanna Besson/PAGE 114 – WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS – PATHÉ FILMS – FRANCE 2 CINÉMA. © 2024 PAGE 114 – WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS – PATHÉ FILMS – FRANCE 2 CINÉMA.
Despite winning a case due primarily to her hard work, lawyer Rita (Saldaña) is tired from the job, mostly because it means helping corrupt clients get away with their crimes. Thus, when a secret offer arrives via phone call to make her rich, her curiosity inspires her to go for it. She then finds herself face-to-face with a cartel leader offering a specific job: help them complete the sex reassignment procedure they’ve longed for all their life. This, of course, is only the first job Rita is tasked with completing as the safety of the leader’s family is also of the highest importance. But once the job is done and all are on their way, Rita discovers that the unexpected in her life is only beginning.
L-R: Zoe Saldaña as Rita Moro Castro and Karla Sofía Gascón as Emilia Pérez in EMILIA PÉREZ. Photo Credit: Netflix. © 2024 Netflix, Inc.
In researching for this review, I came across a Netflix article in which Audiard comments that during the drafting phase of his treatment (the step before the script writing), he noticed that his story was less of a traditional narrative than an opera libretto. A libretto is most typically understood as an opera in which the music is written by the composer and the lyrics by someone else. He doesn’t mention whether it’s because the story of Emilia Pérez is inspired by one character in the Razon novel or that he had three collaborators to help hone the script he developed himself, or if it’s because the film is operatic but not a traditional opera. What is clear, however, is that when the music starts, everything changes and, often, for the better. There’s energy and perspective that’s incredibly moving. As if to set the stage, the film opens with a shot of a city in Mexico and, as the camera descends, a sing-song like voice is heard until we discover that it was just a recording coming out of a van to attract potential customers. This gives the film a sense of entering into a world in which realty and fantasy are going to blend; an element made all the more concrete in the first official song which sees Rita orally constructing the opening remarks she’s meant to draft from court the next morning while in a store, only for all the people on the street to join her, sometimes in dance on the street, sometimes around her desk now placed in the road — the internal and the external inextricably linked. This sequence and one much later when Rita and Emilia (Gascón) reconnect after a four-year period move the viewer for vastly different reasons (the first showcases collective outrage and frustration through Rita’s own words, whereas the second makes one’s blood turn cold in the way Saldaña sings “don’t say it’s by chance,” our own hearts finding themselves in our throats). The theatrical nature, the operatic, is as much spectacle meant to entrance the audience as it is an integral element of the story, conveying the internal aspects of these characters over an unclear total amount of time. A scene that will absolutely earn complex reactions is the montage of locations Rita visits during the pre-surgery portion of the story with one location in Bangkok looking like a millionaire’s version of what a foreign practice conducting sex reassignment surgery looks like, executed with about all the grace and class of Ryan Murphy’s several-season medical drama Nip/Tuck. For all of its focus in this scene with its own musical number, I think it matters, contextually, that Rita doesn’t secure this facility for the procedure, but with an Israeli doctor (played by Mark Ivanir) with a more measured and patient-focused approach versus the more influencer/fast fashion look of the Bangkok practice.
Center: Selena Gomez as Jessi in EMILIA PÉREZ. Photo Credit: PAGE 114 – WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS – PATHÉ FILMS – FRANCE 2 CINÉMA. © 2024 PAGE 114 – WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS – PATHÉ FILMS – FRANCE 2 CINÉMA.
This is a perfect example of the staggering issues within Emilia Pérez that make it harder to parse and process. There’s an entire musical number set within the Bangkok location, full of eerily smiling faces and patients in various poses, but nothing that speaks to the concerns of the patient, only the perspective of the doctor. There’s an enormous ick factor that exudes from this sequence; yet, by contrast, the number with Ivanir’s Dr. Wasserman is just the two in the office, their song a bit of verbal sparring before he agrees to meet the potential patient. In the latter, there’s grace, there’s human engagement, there’s care and concern and it’s likely going to be missed or forgotten with the horrible Bangkok sequence sticking in memory. Had it been dialogue only, the former sequence would’ve been shorter and less likely to make such a significant impact as we gauge Rita’s reaction to the medical environment and what it implies about how it would treat her client. Instead, it’s far easier to remember a bit of transgressive and regressive language used which seems, at least for the scene, as if the film agrees with the mentality.
L-R: Karla Sofía Gascón as Emilia Pérez and Adriana Paz as Epifanía in EMILIA PÉREZ. Photo Credit: Shanna Besson/PAGE 114 – WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS – PATHÉ FILMS – FRANCE 2 CINÉMA. © 2024 PAGE 114 – WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS – PATHÉ FILMS – FRANCE 2 CINÉMA.
Making matters worse, the film seems to forget that Rita is our way in and the one we’re primarily following in the film, despite the title of the film and the character who takes it as her name. Rita is the one the audience meets first, who is our guide through the world of medicine, who is integral toward giving the family a new life, and is the one who we’re meant to fear for when Emilia appears at her restaurant table in London. But, from this scene forward, the film becomes a two-hander between Rita and Emilia with Emilia moving toward the fore-front so much that Rita’s journey abruptly ends whereas Emilia’s is met with a closing number. To whom did we invest so much time that Audiard all but abandons the character despite this often-dramatic trajectory arc Rita endured? It’s not that Emilia’s story doesn’t matter or is in no way important the story, but it’s so selfish in devouring the narrative (potentially part of the point) that it devalues Rita in the process. This, of course, brings us to the central issue with the film for this reviewer: Emilia’s story is meant to feel (in its conclusion) as one of achieved absolution, of redemption for the shitty things done in a prior life by virtue by changing her public legacy, except it’s a hollow illusion. At no point in the film does Emilia atone or take responsibility for past actions that resulted in who knows how many dead in order to make her a cartel leader with politicians in her pockets pre-surgery? Instead, Emilia treats her new life in Mexico as permission to start over, something which any person should have the freedom to do when one’s past feels a burden, but Emilia isn’t like any other person, and by not severing herself from that past properly, by not atoning, not only is Emilia prone to repeated cycles of behavior, but any aggrandizement, any idolization from the community as a result of her good works, taste like ash on the tongue and within the spirit.
Zoe Saldaña as Rita Moro Castro in EMILIA PÉREZ. Photo Credit: Shanna Besson/PAGE 114 – WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS – PATHÉ FILMS – FRANCE 2 CINÉMA. © 2024 PAGE 114 – WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS – PATHÉ FILMS – FRANCE 2 CINÉMA.
The performances, the costuming, the production design, basically the technical elements of Emilia Pérez, are worth one’s attention. There’s incredibly specificity from each of the actors and the crew in creating this world that one cannot discount their energy in captivating audiences where the script frustrates. Perhaps we’re meant to think of this as a story of bad people doing bad things, maybe it’s meant to be a film that’s transgressive without a desire for correction or care, or maybe it’s a result of being too operatic where a traditional narrative telling would ground it enough for the intention to be clear. Instead, Emilia Pérez, for all that dazzles, eventually leaves one wondering if the sparkle is but an ephemeral distraction from the seeming hollowness within, dragging down the wonderful aspects with it.
In select theaters November 1st, 2024.
Available on Netflix November 13th, 2024.
For more information, head to the official Netflix Emilia Pérez webpage.
Final Score: 2.5 out of 5.
Share this:
Categories: In Theaters, Reviews, streaming
Leave a Reply