‘Emilia Pérez’ shamelessly exploits real-world issues all in the name of campy entertainment

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Tastelessness is subjective.

Synopsis

Rita Moro Castro (Zoe Saldaña) is a lawyer in Mexico who has become disillusioned with the corruption in her country. A very lucrative offer comes her way from drug cartel kingpin Juan “Manitas” Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón), who desires to live a new life by undergoing gender-affirming surgery to become a woman. Rita is able to arrange the secret surgery for Manitas, who transitions into a woman, giving herself the new name Emilia Pérez (Karla Sofía Gascón).

Emilia has a new lease on life away from the drug cartel game, but she reconnects with Rita years later so she can get help reuniting with her children and ex-wife Jessi (Selena Gomez). With her former family now back into her life, who are unaware of who she used to be, Emilia tries to reclaim parts of her old life, while still living a new one atoning for her sins.

My thoughts

Remember Mel Brooks’ The Producers, where the characters create a purposefully tasteless musical about Adolf Hitler specifically for it to bomb? Well, that kind of feels like writer-director Jacques Audiard’s intention when making Emilia Pérez. “Feels like” are the keywords, though, as everything about this project is 100% earnest and sincere, a lot for worse and not much for better.

Emilia Pérez definitely has to be one of the most audacious movies that’s been conceived in quite some time. A movie about a Mexican drug cartel leader undergoing surgery to become a woman and live a new life atoning for her sins is a high enough concept, but to make it a musical on top of that? Well, that’s where it becomes too much and puts the movie at odds with itself.

Out of touch, out of mind

Now, anybody who remembers my reviews for Joker: Folie a Deux or Wicked: Part One knows that I’m a fan of musicals, so I have no problem with Emilia Pérez being a musical on a basic level. I just don’t like bad musicals, which this is, but what I like even less are filmmakers that take the incredibly serious subject matter and treat it with a flippant attitude under the guise of “art.”

I’m not saying Emilia Pérez isn’t art. It’s art, just like any other film out there, but its intentions aren’t pure. Jacques Audiard is a 72-year-old man who’s lived in France his whole life and doesn’t speak a lick of Spanish, nor does he seem to have any interest in Mexico until this point. Beyond giving his film some Latin flavor, this film doesn’t feel Mexican at all. I’m sure he thought his heart was in the right place, but just because one has good intentions doesn’t mean that they’re not being exploitative.

Audiard’s intentions of telling a story about a transgender woman rediscovering her life’s purpose are probably the only honest thing about this whole project, but it’s clouded by the fact that this person was a gang leader who was responsible for the deaths and suffering of thousands of innocent people. We’re supposed to feel empathy for Emilia and her gender dysphoria, which is empathy I can extend, but that all vanishes when that person uses it as an excuse for their heinous behavior.

It does offer an interesting discussion of “just because you change your body doesn’t mean you also change your soul,” but it all comes off as insultingly out of touch. What’s happening in Mexico with the drug cartels and government corruption is very real and has affected countless lives there. To make some sort of kitschy musical out of real-world issues like this screams of misguided self-importance. It’s so insanely bizarre that it surpassed being offensive and just left me befuddled.

The only way this premise could have worked as a musical is if there was some satirical element to it, but there’s no satire or even any actual commentary or criticism about Mexico’s corruption and drug cartel problem. It’s all just used as window dressing (even that’s debatable, as it wasn’t filmed there) to tell this story that doesn’t even need to take place in Mexico. The central emotional core of a criminal undergoing gender transition can take place literally anywhere else, and the story would basically be the same, but without the filmmaker insulting you.

Tone-deaf

The songs written by Clément Ducol and Camille aren’t even that good, either. They mostly consist of our characters whisper singing to each other while they recite the most banal and repetitive lyrics you can imagine. Each song begins with a hook and then repeats that hook over and over, complete with uninspired melodies. Ducol also does this annoying thing by detuning his guitar on the last note of the melody, which eventually becomes akin to Chinese water torture.

There’s not even some exciting choreography to make up for these lame numbers, but I suppose that would have just made them come off as even more tasteless. The best musical sequence is El Mal, which recently won the Golden Globe for Best Original Song and was nominated for the Oscars’ same award, featuring Zoe Saldaña singing and rapping around a convention center of politicians, businessmen, and drug kingpins frozen at their tables.

El Mal has the catchiest melody and most interesting choreography of the film by far. That’s the thing, though. Saying this song is the best because it’s catchy and has interesting choreography makes me feel gross. This is a musical with a huge camp element to it, so having Saldaña dancing around and rhythmically lamenting about families being murdered as judges look the other way is simply offensive.

No matter how serious the subject matters of some musicals are, there’s always an air of whimsy to them. It’s something kind of inescapable about the genre. A little bit of camp is inherent in the medium, even if the visuals aren’t filled with glitz and glamor. That makes filling Emilia Pérez with glitz and glamor completely the wrong move. The kind of horrible stuff Saldaña is singing about actually happens, yet here are Audiard and his cast and crew exploiting people’s suffering through song and dance.

Undergoing a transformation

It’s a shame because I do think that there’s a good movie buried deep within Emilia Pérez. The concept is original and interesting enough, with an opportunity to explore themes of identity and redemption, but the musical element and tone greatly hold it back. Instead of building up the characters or plot, they only amount to conversation scenes dragged out longer than needed. I guess making it a musical masked how paper-thin the story and characters are.

Even if some post-production trickery was used to adjust the pitch of the actors’ voices, they’re all throwing themselves into the role, with somewhat mixed results. Karla Sofía Gascón is terrific as both Emilia and Manitas. The makeup work on her pre-transition was genuinely impressive, and Gascón plays Manitas with a threatening aura, but one who uses that aura to mask insecurity.

Gascón is a trans-woman, so I’m sure her personal experiences greatly influenced her performance here. Even if she looks different, the pain behind her eyes, both pre and post-transition, is all the same. There’s this constant sense of wanting to belong or connect that never seems to be fulfilled, so she goes back to what she knows best: control. Even if Emilia is supposed to have left her old life as Manitas behind, shades of her old self occasionally bubble to the surface when things become too much.

But still, Emilia is a drug lord, so I just can’t have any positive feelings for her, no matter how good Gascón’s performance is. If the subject matter wasn’t what it was and executed in the way that it was, there wouldn’t be this hurdle to jump over. Overall, though, Gascón gives a heartfelt and sincere performance that’s let down by a movie that’s the complete opposite.

I thought Zoe Saldaña was decent, but I found her character incredibly unlikable in a sea of already unlikeable characters. Even though she’s the main character (her being nominated for all these supporting actress awards is ludicrous), she’s painfully underwritten and doesn’t have much to do beyond looking either fierce or terrified, depending on what the moment calls for. Saldaña’s facial expressions that can easily go from contempt to pity and then to fear serve her well, at least.

The same goes for Selena Gomez, who has even less to work with. Still, at least she deserves to be in the Best Supporting Actress conversation for the sheer virtue of her being an actual supporting actress (didn’t happen for the Oscars). Gomez gets a couple of moments to shine and show off her pop star skills, but her character is another interesting aspect that could have worked if she had developed properly. Her crazy eyes can only take the character so far.

Final verdict

I’m not opposed to movies being in bad taste (Pink Flamingos is one of my favorite movies, after all), but the director needs to acknowledge that in their filmmaking somehow. If someone thinks they’re serving up a 5-star meal when it’s just an exercise in poor taste, or even worse, no taste at all, all one can glean from the person is that they’re completely delusional and full of themselves.

Emilia Pérez was a huge risk, which I suppose should be commended, but when risk isn’t met with reward, it’s met with failure. Audiard, Saldaña, and others involved have already won a Golden Globe for this and are sure to also win some Oscars after their record 13 nominations, so I guess it paid off. Only the awards it’s winning are off the backs of suffering and marginalized people, so in my mind, that’s a failure. Emilia Pérez serves one purpose and one purpose only: to exploit.