Emilia Pérez ★★★

In 2018, French director Jacques Audiard directed his first English-language film The Sisters Brothers. The film portrayed two brothers, bounty hunters, in a Western setting and was unique as a character study and for its unusual story beats that bear only a faint resemblance to that of its peers in the Western genre. This year’s Emilia Pérez finds Audiard taking a similar, and even more ambitious, approach to storytelling through telling a predominantly Mexico-set crime drama filmed on film sets in Paris as a musical with themes of identity and redemption examined through the experiences of a transgender cartel leader. A 47-word sentence is needed to even try to touch the surface of how much goes on in Emilia Pérez.

The film first introduces us to Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldaña), a lawyer who is displeased with her work in defending powerful men she knows are guilty. She is frustrated when reviewing the details of her latest case and is so preoccupied that the liveliness of the streets, the people, and the music mostly go unnoticed by her. We however will notice the bright reds, yellows, and blues in the scene and these primary colors will find their way into most every frame of Emilia Pérez. Following the completion of her work, Rita is contacted anonymously and promised a large sum of money in exchange for her services. Rita is tempted in no small part due to her dissatisfaction with her work and goes to the newsstand the caller requests to meet at. Seconds after arriving, a bag is put over Rita’s head and she meets with Manitas Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón) the caller and a powerful cartel leader.

Manitas has an unusual request for Rita – he wishes to have gender-affirming surgery and to begin a new life as a woman and relinquish ties to the cartel. To protect his family, Manitas sends his wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and his children to live in Switzerland. He fakes his death and keeps his transition a secret from his family so that Jessi will not be sought out and murdered as Manitas’ wife.

For four years, Rita does not hear from Manitas and her support for him is now firmly in the past until a fateful dinner where Rita and Manitas – now as Emilia Pérez – meet at a dinner with friends. Rita does not recognize Emilia having not seen her since the operation and Rita is fearful upon realizing Emilia’s identity. Emilia assures Rita that she did not meet with her to destroy all evidence of her past life – in fact, to the contrary Emilia has another request for Rita: Emilia wants to reunite with her children and live with them in Mexico City.

Rita ensures Emilia is reunited with her children and presents Emilia to Jessi and their children as a cousin of Manitas. Emilia’s transformation is so different from Manitas’ appearance that Jessi does not recognize her and as a viewer, I too was surprised that Manitas was played by the same actor as Emilia. This only goes to credit Karla Sofía Gascón’s talent as an actor. Emilia’s and Manitas’ voice and mannerisms are distinct with the intimidating and cold presence of Manitas not apparent within Emilia. Emilia keeps her identity secret from her children and Jessi though this requires great restraint from Emilia, particularly around her children who she wishes to be affectionate for and love openly.

The separation between the lives of Manitas and Emilia is blurred by reintroducing her children and Jessi into her life, and this comes as a source of conflict since Jessi has moved on from Manitas having believed he had died years ago. After meeting the mother of a missing child who was killed by the cartel, Emilia starts a non-profit organization to identify the bodies of cartel victims with the help of her cartel connections and now the separation between Emilia and her past life is completely blurred. Despite transitioning to a new identity as Emilia, she is unable to leave her life as Manitas behind her and seeks redemption.

In Emilia Pérez Audiard makes an, up until this point, unexplored connection between the theme of leaving one’s past behind that is often explored in crime dramas and the experience of transitioning as a transgender person. Emilia’s recollection of her life as Manitas is inevitable for her despite her experience of gender dysphoria ever since she was a child and knowing that Emilia is who she is truly meant to be. Nonetheless, it is the sum of all of our experiences that defines our identity despite our willingness to leave elements of ourselves in the past and our desire to live authentically. It is this challenge of reconciling her identity as Emilia that leads her to reestablish her presence within her family and seek redemption for her crimes as a cartel leader through her non-profit. Through exploring Emilia’s character, Audiard provides an evocative portrayal of the grey area that exists between our lives and our perspective of our role within family and society. The lyrics of the songs and choreography in Emilia Pérez also illustrate conflicts and juxtapositions between law and corruption, order and disorder, authenticity and deception. The second half of the film following the transition from Manitas to Emilia is the most compelling for this reason.

In total, Emilia Pérez is an idiosyncratic entry within an already varied filmography. Even avid filmgoers won’t have seen anything like it and might not again for some time. Audiard provides a novel outsider perspective through his telling of a crime drama and transgender story in Emilia Pérez.