Review: Emilia Perez

Image courtesy of Netflix.

It's been quite a season of unique moviegoing experiences, from the outrageous horror satire "The Substance" and the gutter poetry of Sean Baker's Palm d'Or winner "Anora" to Jacques Audiard's trans crime musical "Emilia Perez." The latter was a hit at Cannes and is certainly audacious.

The picture opens with a lawyer named Rita (Zoe Saldana) winning a court case for a client whom she knows to be a murderer. Shortly thereafter, she is contacted by an even bigger criminal, a Mexican cartel leader named Manitas Del Monte, who has an unexpected job for her. 

Manitas wants to transition to become a woman and needs someone to move his family - which includes Jessi (Selena Gomez) and several children - to Switzerland, help him fake his death, and start a new life after having a sex-change operation.

Some years later, Rita is in London for work and runs into a woman named Emilia Perez (Karla Sofia Gascon), whom she soon figures out was the former cartel leader. At first she fears for her life, but Emilia tells Rita that she needs her help in bringing her family back to Mexico. Of course, none of them will know who she really is.

If you're thinking this is merely a film about a person who has transitioned getting the chance to reconnect with their family, well, you're in for some surprises. Yes, "Emilia Perez" is a musical - and the musical numbers, I'll add, are varied in quality - but it also follows Rita and Emilia's initiative to help families of the hundreds of thousands of Mexicans who have gone missing due to cartel kidnappings unearth the bodies of their loved ones. 

"Emilia Perez" is vibrant, well acted, and full of energy. It's also a little all over the place. As I'd mentioned, the musical numbers are a mixed bag - some good, a few I could have done without - and the plot veers wildly - occasionally, it concerns itself with the attempt to relocate the missing people, while at other times it focuses on the tension between Jessi and Emilia, whom the former doesn't know was previously her spouse, and there's even a romance between Emilia and a woman who comes to claim the body of a missing spouse.

But for the most part, "Emilia Perez" works. Saldana gives one of her finest performances, while Gascon - who is apparently a Spanish soap opera star - is a revelation and Gomez is grittier than one might expect. So, while not every single aspect of the picture works - the film is directed by a Frenchman and it has an outsider's view of a country's turmoil that is noticeable - "Emilia Perez" is a unique and engaging moviegoing experience. There's a lot going on in this film and most of it is enticing.