Trans musicals are officially a thing now. For years, Hedwig and the Angry Inch had the field to itself. Since then, it’s been joined by the Spanish entry 20 Centimeters (hard to find, but worth tracking down) and this year’s The People’s Joker (wildly uneven, but very good on its trans subject matter). Now there’s Emilia Pérez, which is fairly disastrous as a musical and also one of the year’s best crime thrillers. The winner of two major prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, it is France’s entry into the Oscar race. If you want to see what it takes to make the French pick a Mexican film that’s mostly in Spanish to represent their country, take a gander at this movie that is still playing at América Cinemas Fort Worth and premieres on Netflix today.
The film begins with Dominican-born lawyer Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldaña) minding her business in Mexico City when she’s black-bagged, thrown in the back of a van, transported to an armed compound, and brought face-to-face with feared drug cartel kingpin Manitas del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón). Luckily, he’s not interested in hurting Rita but rather in asking for her help: He has been undergoing hormone treatments for some years to transition to becoming a woman, and he needs her to arrange his final surgery in secret — even his American wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) can’t know — at a clinic that’s outside Mexico or the United States. With Rita’s assistance, Manitas sends Jessi and their kids into hiding in Switzerland, fakes his own death, undergoes surgery in Israel, and emerges as Emilia Pérez. That appears to be the end of it, but then four years later, Rita finds Emilia sitting at her restaurant table in London, re-engaging her to bring her family back to Mexico because she can’t live without her children.
That’s just the beginning, as there’s enough plot in this 130-minute film to fill out a season of a telenovela. I do like the detail that Rita accepts the job because her race makes it impossible for her to make senior partner at her firm or start her own firm. (Mexico has a lot fewer Black people than other parts of Latin America, so yeah, racial discrimination is a thing down there.) Despite the extreme danger if anyone finds out about her past, Emilia pours Manitas’ drug money into an NGO devoted to recovering the bodies of cartels’ murder victims, which gives rise to “Para,” a rousing anthem sung by the victims’ families as well as imprisoned hit men who feel remorse about their crimes. To top it off, Emilia falls in love with a murdered man’s widow (Adriana Paz) while Jessi has her own guy on the side (Edgar Ramírez).
Director Jacques Audiard made some of the most brutal French thrillers of the early 2000s like Read My Lips and The Beat That My Heart Skipped, though he turned in a shaggy comedy for his one English-language film, The Sisters Brothers. I’m afraid he’s fundamentally miscast for a musical. His filmmaking is about slow-burn thrills rather than a musical’s explosive energy, and he’s more comfortable staging shootouts than dance numbers. It is surreally bad when Rita visits a clinic in Bangkok and the gender reassignment patients dance behind her singing “rhinoplasty, vaginoplasty.” Audiard and habitual writing partner Thomas Bidegain have crafted a musical that would work better without most of its numbers. The songs by the French duo of Clément Ducol and Camille don’t have much grasp of the Mexican milieu, though that would matter less if they were more memorable.
He’s bailed out by his cast members, especially the Americans. Saldaña’s dance training serves her well in “El Mal,” Rita’s song about her growing dissatisfaction with the crooked politicians contributing to Emilia’s charity. Similarly, Gomez’ karaoke number “Mi Camino” would work perfectly well as a music video on its own thanks to the pop star’s skills. (You’d think the former star of Wizards of Waverly Place would stick out in a film as serious-minded as this, but no. Gomez is no more shallow and American than the character demands.)
As for Gascón, the Spanish-born actress performed in TV and films as a male actor for some years before transitioning in 2018. She won the Best Actress prize at Cannes, and her turn as a woman whose murderous male past self isn’t dead is good value for the money. When you think about it, who better than a trans actor to portray a character who’s both the hero and the villain of her story? If you’re trans and you’ve taken the latest election results as proof that America hates you specifically — and I really don’t blame you if you do — Emilia Pérez might be a good place to start coping with it all.
Emilia Pérez
Starring Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, and Zoe Saldaña. Directed by Jacques Audiard. Written by Jacques Audiard and Thomas Bidegain. Rated R.
