Jump to the good stuff: The Story | Some Thoughts | The Final Verdict
The Story:
Emilia Pérez is a musical about a drug lord who hires a lawyer to help disappear and transition into a woman.
Mexican lawyer Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldaña) is going nowhere with her career. Although she’s driven, smart, and knows how to put together a case, her work is undervalued. When she gets an anonymous call for a job that would pay her handsomely, she decides to meet with the mysterious client.
She arrives at the designated meeting area and two men put a bag over her head and throw her into a car. At their destination, the bag is removed, and Rita finds herself face to face with drug kingpin Juan “Manitas” Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón). Juan asks Rita to help her get gender reassignment surgery so she can live her authentic life. The clinch is that nobody can know what they’re planning, and once the date is set, Juan will disappear, leaving enough money for her wife, Jesse (Selena Gomez), and their two children to live.
After a lengthy search, Rita finds a surgeon willing to perform the operation. The date for the surgery is set, and Juan has Jesse and their children relocated to Switzerland. Juan’s death is faked and leaked to the news, leaving Jesse a widow. Meanwhile, Juan has surgery and changes her name to Emilia while Rita moves to London and becomes a successful lawyer.
Four years later, Rita and Emilia meet at a restaurant. Emilia explains that she misses her children terribly and wishes to be reunited with them. They decide to introduce Emilia to her wife and children as Juan’s aunt, and so that story begins.
Some Thoughts:
Emilia Pérez is everything you don’t expect from a crime drama. It has music, dancing, a drug lord with gender dysphoria, and treats its subject seriously. And as it turns out, it’s highly entertaining…as long as you suspend belief and give into it.
What really helps this film is that it looks great. The color pallet, framing, and transitions are beautiful. The acting is also good, the musical numbers fit into the story well, and the choreography is fun.
There are some moments that are unbelievable, such as how quickly Rita believes that Juan is trans. And the speed in which she’s able to convince a surgeon to perform the gender reassignment surgeries. It’s also odd that Jessie, who spent years with Juan, never suspected that her spouse is trans. While it is possible, it would have to be explained to make it believable. On top of that, it makes no sense that Jessie accepts her deceased spouse’s aunt, who she’d never met or heard of, without question. And if that wasn’t enough, Jessie doesn’t notice any similarities between Emilia and her spouse. Really?
The film also doesn’t get into how Emilia dealt with being trans and a drug lord, nor how it affected her relationship with Jessie. We must accept that it was a part of her that she’d kept hidden, so we never get a sense of what that was like.
After transitioning, Emilia becomes a very different person. Because we never know how or why she became the head of a drug ring, we don’t know if she was happy with the life. Was this simply a way to make money? Did she always plan to leave it behind once she had enough money to start anew? Since we don’t know, it feels contrived.
The Final Verdict:
Despite its shortcomings, Emilia Pérez is a very entertaining film. Jacques Audiard took some major risks in making this film and comes very close to making it work. I have to say, it’s quite an achievement.
