Photo Courtesy of Netflix
She’s baaaaack! I’ve been on a bit of a WERRRK.com hiatus, but I couldn’t resist this year’s slate of queer Oscar fare. I’m kicking off the season with a review of Emilia Pérez, a film so bonkers it almost defies description. Jacques Audiard’s musical about a Mexican drug dealer who gets gender affirming surgery and tries to break good is one of the weirdest movies I’ve seen this year, and the story is the least strange part about it. Tonally insane and way outside the bounds of a traditional musical, Emilia Pérez, which racked up thirteen Oscar nominations, had me rapt from start to finish. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But I’d rather see a big swing and a miss than some of the formulaic dreck that’s been floating around in recent years.
While the film explores identity, it’s not really about the kinds of identity it purports to represent. The conversation around Emilia Pérez has largely been dominated by questions of authenticity, interrogating who has the right to tell which stories. If a filmmaker is not trans or Mexican, do they have the right to tell a trans or a Mexican story? But is Emilia Pérez actually a trans or Mexican story? If there’s a human core that goes deeper than gender, nationality, and profession, is it ever okay to use those markers as symbolic conduits to a deeper truth? That Audiard, who is nominated for Best Directing and Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay), has chosen the format of a musical melodrama to tell this particular story suggests from the outset that we are dealing with a realm beyond reality, so I wonder if he can be forgiven for oversimplifying, and possibly being embarrassingly wrong about, details about those specific experiences. The character of Emilia Pérez is so outrageous that there’s no way she could be a stand in for some sort of blanket trans experience. In my view, Emilia Pérez asks if humans are capable of transformation. If someone has lived a life of chaos and destruction, can they change their ways and atone for their past sins? Which parts of us are fundamental and which are simply constructs of our environment? Which parts of our identities are fixed? What even is identity? These questions are not just applicable to the character of Emilia Pérez; each supporting character must investigate who they are in new locations and contexts. For all the hoopla surrounding this movie, I haven’t really heard people trying to tackle its core meaning. The questions Emilia Pérez raises are worth pondering, and the only person who can answer them for you is you.
Emilia Pérez is at turns scary and moving and absurd and hilarious and tender and stupid, but always bold. Karla Sofía Gascón, the first transgender actor to be nominated for Best Actress (I won’t really get into it here, but her problematic tweets weirdly complicate the questions of this film), is magnetic in both the pre and post-op versions of the titular role. Zoe Saldaña’s beautiful performance is probably the favorite to win Best Supporting Actress, and Selena Gomez is the best I’ve ever seen her. This film is not for everyone, and among my own friends I know people who loved it and others who hated it. See it for yourself, engage with it on its own terms as well as yours, and support weird art!
