Time: 132 Minutes
Cast:
Zoe Saldaña as Rita Mora Castro
Karla Sofía Gascón as Emilia Pérez
Selena Gomez as Jessi Del Monte
Adriana Paz as Epifanía Flores
Édgar Ramírez as Gustavo Brun
Director: Jacques Audiard

I remember first hearing about Emilia Perez, it was being shown at film festivals and was being acclaimed by critics. As more general audiences have had chances to watch it however, I had been seeing a lot of criticisms and discourse online, and the movie honestly didn’t look that good to me from what I saw. However, I knew I was going to check it out for myself since it was getting some awards attention, and I actually watched it the day after its wins at the Golden Gloves. I’m saying all this to preface that I went into Emilia Perez expecting to not like it, but trying to be open minded nonetheless. And yet, I came away liking it even less than I thought I would.

The premise of the movie as often advertised is that it’s about Zoe Saldana as a lawyer being hired to help a cartel boss (Emilia Perez) transition into a plot, but this pretty much takes up its first act. Following that, it’s like the rest of the movie is trying to figure out what it’s even about. When certain ‘unflattering’ clips from the film were circulating online, some people were defending them by saying that it was ‘camp’. Emilia Perez certainly has some silly moments (mainly in the first act), such as the musical number when Saldana goes to a sex change hospital. But on the whole, it plays things weirdly straight for a musical, and I kind of wished that it was more campy and trashy, because then it might’ve been somewhat fun to watch. While I had already heard about Emilia Perez’s more questionable aspects going in, I wasn’t expecting it to be so dull and boring. The writing is very undercooked, the characters weren’t interesting and their dynamics were mostly underwhelming, and the dialogue is awkward (and not even in an entertaining way). There are certain elements introduced in the plot which had potential and could’ve worked if they had explored them, but they aren’t developed enough to mean anything by the end. I’m not convinced that the movie even needed to have musical numbers, in fact, I think it would’ve been better without them. They just don’t mix with the gritty crime story that they were aiming for. Emilia Perez concludes with a shrug of a third act and ending so insultingly abrupt and anticlimactic that it’s almost funny. Any goodwill or benefits of doubt build up over the course of the movie is lost in the finale.

Now I should address the aspects that have generated the most controversy. Emilia Perez attempts to cover so many sensitive topics and somehow manages to be regressive with all of them. Director Jacques Audiard has said that he didn’t do research into Mexico and Mexican culture, because he apparently already knew what he needed to know. I only mentioned this because it certainly came across in the actual movie. I’m not going to claim to be an expert on Mexico, and I won’t be able to weigh in on criticisms from other people about the accents, dialogue and performances allegedly not being authentic. But the impression that I got having watched the movie was that Audiard had little to no interest in Mexico or its culture, and just used it as a background for the story. Any actual serious topic or issue that it tries to portray is boiled down, simplified caricatured (mainly drug cartels and the many disappearances in Mexico), and Mexico is portrayed as an inherently violent and crime infested place. It also seems to have a regressive understanding of transness, I wouldn’t be surprised if little to no research was done into this topic either. Minor spoilers, but one example is a moment in which Emilia Perez’s son says that she smells like her father, and people knowledgeable enough know that hormones have a notable effect on body odour and considering that she had gone through HRT, this probably wouldn’t happen. That feels like such an easy thing to figure out with the smallest amount of research. But it’s not just the inaccuracy about the effects of transitioning, it’s also the questionable way it treats its title character, which includes dabbling in regressive trans tropes. In brief, it treats the sole trans character as a liar, deceiver and manipulator, and as much as the movie tries to validate her identity, it is often played as a disguise, not helped by the fact that her transition was paired alongside faking her death to start a new life. Whenever she does ‘bad’ things, she’s portrayed as if she’s regressing back to her ‘male self’, down to her even lowering her voice. I will say this: even without these problematic aspects and portrayals, Emilia Perez would still have a lot of issues. Still, it makes a bad movie additionally misguided and tasteless, and the experience a little more unpleasant.

To her credit, Zoe Saldaña, both with the musical and dramatic parts. It is worth noting however that despite being placed in the supporting actress categories at awards, she is the main character, more so than Emilia Perez at least. Speaking of which, Karla Sofia Gascón plays the title character and she does good work considering how underwritten her character is. Despite the movie being called Emilia Perez and much of the plot and characters revolving around her, it doesn’t feel like her movie. We don’t get a sense of her as a person, her characterisation is very messy, and she’s mostly defined by who she was pre-transition. It also seems reluctant to engage with her as a character or with the things she had done in the past, and without spoilers her story by the end was not handled all that well. Adriana Paz is really good in a supporting role, and it’s a shame she’s not in it more. There are some good interactions between her and Gascón and I wish we got a lot more of that, because it’s honestly one of the subplots that had the most potential. Selena Gomez played the third major character in the plot, and while I had been seeing some awards attention for her, I don’t see why; her bland performance doesn’t leave much of an impression. To be fair, the writing for her character is very rough, it’s a thankless role and it felt like her character was left off to the side.

It would be charitable to call Jacques Audiard’s direction a mixed bag. On its own the visuals are okay, but sometimes a little flat, and especially don’t fit the musical numbers. Speaking of which, the directing of these musical sections is very rough. While there is some decent choreography, the attempts at having a hyper style don’t really work. It is choppy, doesn’t have the right energy to pull it off, and even the fast and flashy camera movements make it look silly.  The placements of these scenes also felt more like distractions than anything to help tell the story. They just don’t fit in the movie, and there are only a few exceptions which stand out in terms of impact and importance. Also, the songs just aren’t that good, in fact I’d say that almost all of them are bad.

Outside of some good performances from Saldaña and Gascón, Emilia Perez is a melodramatic, hollow, terribly written, choppy, tone deaf, and tasteless musical with bad songs. While it isn’t the most important thing, I’m more than baffled that Emilia Perez has gotten this amount of awards attention, let alone become a Best Picture frontrunner. I’m the kind of person who would give messy movies credit for their big swings, but I just can’t with this one. It’s difficult to recommend watching this unless you want to stay up to date with this awards season.