Emilia Perez has arrived—film and character, both feted by the Golden Globe Awards and a certainty for Oscar nominations. Partly comedy, partly musical, and fully thriller set in Mexico by a French director, Jacques Audiard, it is an entertaining hybrid that, like The Crying Game, holds riches while it explores a trans subject with care and sensitivity.
Character Emilia/Manitas (Karla Sofia Gascon—a trans herself), a kingpin drug lord, hires attorney Rita (Zoe Saldana) to help her get a sex change. The thriller aspect is ready made as Manitas’ bloody past cannot be expunged even with the change. Attending physician Wasserman (Mark Ivanir) tells Rita he can change the body but not the soul.
Woven into the drama of the trans activity is a series of songs, some unusually light such as gender reallocation patients singing about vaginoplasty and mammoplasty, with a distinct echo of Pedro Almodovor’s humor amidst out-there sexuality. Some aud may complain about the abrupt tonal changes such interruptions bring, but that seems to be Audiard’s purpose in disrupting our normal lives.
More surprising is to see the change that comes over the trans Emilia, whose life after becomes dedicated to charitably finding lost people, some of whom she was responsible for murdering as Manitas.
Emilia Perez is a cornucopia of motifs celebrating dynamic, diversifying modern life. Watch for it at Oscar time. On Netflix, free with subscription.
Emilia Perez
Director: Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Dheepan)
Screenplay: Audiard, Thomas Bidegain (Rust and Bone) Lea Mysius (The Five Devils)
Cast: Zoe Saldana (Avatar, Guardians of the Galaxy), Karla Sofia (We Are the Nobles) Gascon
Rating: R
Length: 2h 13m
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take (recently listed by Feedspot as two of the ten best NPR Movie Podcasts) out of WCBE 90.5 FM, Columbus, Ohio. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com