Emilia Pérez Is a Disaster From Start to Finish

It's appropriate that Emilia Pérez, French film director Jacques Audiard's movie musical about a transgender cartel boss, should begin with a kidnapping because for the entirety of its interminable 132-minute runtime, I felt as if I was the one being held hostage. It is not simply the worst film of the year; it is a vicious insult, not only to trans people but to the entire nation of Mexico.

The film begins with Rita (Zoe Saldaña), a cynical attorney in Mexico City, making ends meet by defending guilty men against her conscience. One evening, after receiving a mysterious phone call, she's bound, head-bagged, and thrown in a car to meet Manitas del Monte (Karla Sofia Gascón), a mass-murderer drug kingpin with a secret. She is a transgender woman who has remained in the closet for years for fear of violent reprisal from the other narcos. Having started hormone replacement therapy — she reveals her breasts to Rita as proof — she seeks to fake the death of Manitas, sends her supposedly clueless wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) to exile in Switzerland with their kids, and completes her transition with sex-reassignment surgery, starting a new life under the name Emilia Pérez.

Got all that? It's only the first act, and the plot only gets more convoluted. The action picks up five years later when Rita and Emilia reconnect in London. Emilia misses her family and convinces Rita to help relocate them back to Mexico so they can live with her, disguised as a distant relative of Manitas. Guilty over her past crimes, Emilia decides to start a charity, La Lucecita, investigating cartel-related disappearances and murders. Jessi, meanwhile, feeling stifled and controlled after years of being Manitas' kept woman, rekindles an affair she was having while her husband was alive, complicating matters further.

This film has enough plot holes to fill an entire wheel of Swiss cheese. How did Emilia conceal her pre-op bodily changes for so long, especially from her wife? How is it possible that no one is looking into the past or the finances of a mysterious, highly visible philanthropist who suddenly wants to dump an entire fortune into searching for missing persons, supposedly out of the kindness of their heart? The entire final act, in particular, initiated when Emilia learns of Jessi's affair and intentions to move out with the kids, could have been solved by Emilia revealing her former identity to her ex-wife. Instead, it's turned into a ludicrous setup for a dramatic action sequence that ends with a car exploding.
Of course, if we really want to talk about ridiculousness in this film, it's mainly found in the ludicrous musical numbers. Styles range from furious Spanish rap to electro-pop and traditional balladry, but the common denominator is absurd premises and uniformly terrible lyrics. One early number sees an entire staff of Bangkok hospital sing and dance along while explaining the various surgical procedures to Rita: "Mammoplasty, vaginoplasty, rhinoplasty, laryngoplasty." Another one features Emilia's young son recognizing her by scent and describing how "you smell like papa/You smell like mountains, leather, and coffee...like sugar, like grilled lamb, the smell of an engine." 

The songs do not provide greater insight into the characters as is common in musicals. Instead, they either feel relegated to transitional moments or tacked on as extravagant showstoppers. It's almost as if the film is afraid to commit to being an honest-to-god musical. In fact, the film stuffs so many conflicting genres into its already-long runtime — prestige drama, telenovela, musical, narco-thriller — that it comes across as completely confused about what kind of film it wants to be.

Speaking of which, the character of Emilia also becomes a major issue for the film, which makes constant inquiries into whether she is genuinely a new woman. Early in the movie, she convinces the shady Israeli doctor (Mark Ivanir) hired by Rita to complete the surgery that she has always been hiding her true gender identity as a survival mechanism, yet as soon as she brings her family home, she begins to question it. After learning of Jessi's affair, Emilia switches back to Manitas' masculine vocal register to chastise and threaten her, as if the man is still inside her. One song sees her characterize herself as "half him, half her/half papa, half tía."
I am a straight, cisgender man, and I cannot claim to understand the trans experience fully. (Although, to be sure, trans critics such as my New Times colleague Juan Barquin have also criticized the film.) But none of the transgender people in my life would ever question whether or not they are the gender they claim to be. Yet Emilia constantly backtracks on her chosen identity. The film seems to believe its title character is some confused, perverted man. It traffics in the same tired and dangerous stereotypes that have been ascribed to trans people for generations. Still, I did not dislike the performance of Gascón, a telenovela star in Spain and Mexico who came out as transgender in 2018. Although her character may be flawed, her commitment to the role is the one bright spot in the film, especially compared to the stilted, unconvincing acting of costar Gomez and the grueling bitterness of Saldaña's Rita.

As offensive as the film's gender politics are, its consideration of the cartel violence in Mexico and its portrayal of the country in general as corrupt, violent, and dirty is perhaps even more appalling. This is a film wherein narco-killers and their victims reconcile in song; it is a total trivialization of a conflict in which hundreds of thousands of civilians have been murdered, and many others have disappeared, all to satisfy the demand for drugs from countries like the U.S. and France, which financed the film.

Emila Pérez is a disaster from beginning to end, mocking the people it supposedly aims to uplift.

New Times first viewed this film at the 62nd New York Film Festival.

Emilia Pérez. Starring Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofia Gascón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, and Edgar Ramirez. Written and directed by Jacques Audiard. 132 minutes. Rated R. In limited theatrical release, with Miami screenings at O Cinema South Beach, the Landmark at Merrick Park, and CMX CinéBistro CityPlace Doral. Streaming on Netflix starting on Wednesday, November 13; check for showtimes at miaminewtimes.com/miami/movietimes.