- Emilia Pérez
- Directed by: Jacques Audiard
- Starring: Karla Sofia Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez
- Musical/Thriller | R | 2 hr 10 min
By Reed Ripley
Emilia Pérez is an extremely important film about identity, transformation, and learning to love yourself—at least, that’s what the film desperately wants to be, and that’s the problem. Emilia Pérez tries so hard, but that effort shows in the worst ways, leading to a mess of a finished product that can’t get out of its own way.
The film’s premise—a drug cartel kingpin who transitions from man to woman and tries to leave her demons behind in the process—is interesting, and it’s easy to imagine a much more effective film that stays focused on that premise. Instead, Emilia Pérez throws way too much at the wall thinking everything will stick, yet few things do.
Fundamentally, the film’s major themes, and more specifically how the film goes about exploring those themes, feel extremely dated in frustrating ways. Over the past decade or so, audiences have had a considerable amount of exposure to the trans community. That exposure tends to devolve into culture war issues that have nothing to do with trans people, but still, people are generally aware of themes central to trans characters.
In fact, Netflix, who acquired distribution rights to the film out of the Cannes Film Festival, is largely responsible for that—Orange is the New Black, one of the service’s first massive hits that released more than a decade ago, prominently featured a trans character portrayed by trans actor Laverne Cox. This isn’t new at this point, and audiences are primed for themes of identity and acceptance, both internal and external, in these stories. Emilia Pérez doesn’t acknowledge that whatsoever, and it leaves so much depth and exploration on the table as a result.
Those thematic issues are even more stark against the backdrop of everything else going on in the film. It’s a musical (it was originally written as an opera libretto), but its songs and accompanying set pieces are often clunky, bizarre, and offer little more than shock value; its portrayal of Mexico City and Mexican culture are rife with tired stereotypes; the Spanish dialogue itself is stilted and unnatural; and the cast seems as though they were each given completely directions as to what film they were in.
Emilia Pérez isn’t going away this awards season (it just had a great night at the Golden Globes), but it’s confounding as to why. There are clearly good intentions behind the film, but good intentions can only get something so far—the execution is simply not there.
Reed Ripley is the Telegraph’s movie critic.
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