Review of “Emilia Perez”: A musical heightened by danger and daring

A lawyer, the main character and his wife fall into a musical, and “Emilia Perez”, the French, is born Jacques AudiardA rich, colorful epic about transformation, redemption and finding your voice in a difficult world. But also, because it’s still an Audiard film, it’s about something we can never escape.

It can never be ignored how rich the crime genre can be in its narrative of pain and liberation (“Prophet”, “Dipan”), the writer-director made his biggest splash with Emilia Perez, using its Mexican milieu of cartels and misery as the basis for a full-on Spanish-language sing-along built around gender reassignment—one that effectively, albeit unwittingly, evokes a nation’s yearning for change. It’s a full plate for any cinematographer, even one as experienced with internal turbulence as Audiard.

But he also became one of the most satisfied film films to date, centering the experiences of three (and eventually four) fierce women rather than his usual brooding men. Audiard thrusts them all into a feverish, Almodovar-esque melodrama that matches his sensuous cinematic instincts. Unsurprisingly, he understands the mad logic of the musical number’s tone and texture, aided by editor Juliette Welfling’s rhythmic (but never excessive) cutting.

First up in the script is Rita Zoe Saldaña, an overworked lawyer who is tired of wasting her talents defending violent men, but is drawn to an offer made privately one evening by the fearsome cartel lord Manitas (Carla Sofia Gascón): Help carry out a covert transfer operation and the world will be one less bad guy and one more realized woman. Two, supposedly, if you count the payday that will allow Rita to leave work. Again, subtract one for Manitas’ unsuspecting, much younger wife, Jessie (Selena Gomez), who was tricked into Switzerland with her two children by the imminent danger hoax and then made to believe her husband had been murdered.

Selena Gomez in the movie “Emilia Perez”.

(Netflix)

It’s all quite simply operatic, with declarative, percussive melodies from Clément Ducol and Camille adding pops to the feeling (fury, anxiety, longing) of any scene. But just as the story jumps forward four years, and the rich, glamorous Emilia Perez (Gascony) clashes with the bewildered Rita, the narrative in the film’s second act sows an even richer tapestry of showdowns and grievances. Emotionally drawn to reconnect and revisit her old life, Emilia returns to Mexico City with everyone’s fate: restless, lonely Jessie moves in with Emilia’s generous, unheard-of “cousin,” the kids get a new (but somehow familiar) loving aunt, then as Emilia and Rita—now friends and allies—found an NGO to help grieving women find missing husbands and sons. Love even blossoms for Emilia with the bewildered widow (the excellent Adriana Paz).

In everyone’s pursuit of joy, non-melodic complications invariably occur. In Emilia Pérez, as in many of Audiard’s films, the new life, however daring it may be, is only a holding pattern until the past returns. So it’s no surprise that a filmmaker as attuned to tenderness and violence as Audiard found the content of his metaphorical genre dreams in a story about a transgender man emerging from a toxic masculinity shell. All this penetrates the dark urban appeal of Paul Guillaume’s cinematography, especially when he plays on the faces of the leading ladies, turning the skin into a palette of moods, illuminating all the musical interludes.

Zoe Saldaña in the movie “Emilia Perez”.

(Netflix)

However, none of this would have worked without the team of this cast, which is rightly celebrated at Cannes. Gomez’s flamboyance seems like an asset that films should uphold, and Gascon’s sensually charged portrayal would be out of place for a classic Hollywood female noir. But the real knockout is Saldaña, the audience’s sympathetic surrogate and urgent source of energy. Musicals — good, creative ones like “Emilia Perez” — have a way of catapulting underappreciated talent into the stratosphere, and in a sequence like the stiff, dazzling choreography of “El Mal,” in which she flings scorn, a packed path through a gala benefit for the rich hypocrites, it’s easy to believe that Saldaña might be the most versatile movie actor around.