Review of 'Emilia Pérez': Musical enhanced by danger and daring

A lawyer, a boss and his wife enter a musical and “Emilia Pérez” is born, Frenchman Jacques Audiard's colorful and full-bodied epic about transformation, redemption and finding one's voice in a difficult world. But also, as it is still an Audiard film, it is about something we can never escape.

The screenwriter and director, who never ignores how rich the crime genre can be when it comes to conveying its stories of pain and liberation (“A Prophet”, “Dheepan”), has taken his biggest turn so far with “Emilia Pérez ”, using its Mexican environment. of cartels and suffering as the basis for a full-throated Spanish song marathon built around a gender reassignment, something that effectively, if inadvertently, triggers a nation's longing for change. That's a plate for any filmmaker, even someone with as much experience in internal turbulence as Audiard.

But it has also made for one of its most satisfying moments. movie films to date centering the experiences of three (and eventually four) fierce women, rather than their usual brooding men. Audiard pushes them all into a kind of feverish, Almodóvar-adjacent melodrama that suits his instinct for sensory cinema. Not surprisingly, he understands the crazy logic of tone and texture of a musical number, aided by editor Juliette Welfling's rhythmic (but never exaggerated) cutting.

First on stage is Rita, played by Zoe Saldaña, an overworked lawyer tired of wasting her talent defending violent men, but attracted by the proposal offered privately one night by the fearsome lord of the Manitas cartel (Karla Sofía Gascón ): help facilitate a secret transition surgery. and the world will have one less bad guy and one more accomplished woman. Two, apparently, if you count the payday that will allow Rita to quit her job. On the other hand, subtract one, if you consider Manitas' unsuspecting and much younger wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez), who is whisked away to Switzerland with her two children under the ruse of imminent danger and then led to believe that her husband has been murdered.

It's all already quite pulp-operatic, with declarative, percussive melodies from Clément Ducol and Camille adding pop to the feelings (anger, worry, longing) of any given scene. But it is when the story advances four years and the rich and glamorous Emilia Pérez (Gascón) stars in a run-in with a stunned Rita, that the narrative of the film's second act sows a richer tapestry of spectacular moments and regrets. Emilia, emotionally drawn to reconnect and revisit her old life, manipulates everyone's destinies back to Mexico City: the restless and lonely Jessi moves in with the generous and unheard of “cousin” Emilia, the children have a new (but somehow familiar) loving aunt. while Emilia and Rita, now friends and allies, found an NGO to help distraught women locate their missing husbands and children. Love even blossoms for Emilia with a distraught widow (a wonderful Adriana Paz).

Invariably, there are complications out of tune in everyone's pursuit of joy. In “Emilia Pérez,” as in many Audiard films, a new life, no matter how bold, is simply a holding pattern until the past comes roaring back. It's no surprise, then, that a filmmaker as attuned to tenderness and violence as Audiard has found the material for his metaphor-laden genre dreams in the story of a trans queen who emerges from a toxic masculine shell. It all seeps into the sombre urban charm of Paul Guilhaume's cinematography, especially when reproduced on the faces of his protagonists, turning skin into a palette of moods, polishing all the musical interludes.

Zoe Saldaña in the film “Emilia Pérez”.

(Netflix)

However, none of this would work without the command of this justifiably honest cast at Cannes. Gomez's irritation feels like an asset that movies should encourage, and Gascón's sensually charged performance wouldn't be out of place to anchor Hollywood's classic female noir. But the real knockout is Saldaña, a compassionate audience surrogate and source of urgent energy. Musicals – good, imaginative ones, like “Emilia Pérez” – have a way of shooting underrated talents into the stratosphere, and in a sequence like the hard-edged, dazzlingly choreographed “El Mal” theme, which cuts through a contempt . packed walk through a benefit gala of rich hypocrites, it's easy to believe that Saldaña might be the most versatile screen actor out there.