If some story aspects of Emilia Pérez seem familiar, it’s because writer-director Jacques Audiard was inspired by a particular chapter in Boris Razon’s 2018 novel, Écoute. But if some of the visual aspects seem familiar, it’s no doubt because viewers recognize the style as inherently “Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet.” Right down to the movie poster with its neon heart framing two guns with crosses on the grips. Indeed, Luhrmann’s seminal 1996 movie (almost as seminal as the William Shakespeare play itself) has appeared to have a noticeable influence on pop culture lately, if one is to go by the aesthetic of Emilia Pérez and the recently cancelled Netflix series, Kaos. The latter even goes so far as to use the same storytelling “shtick” by updating something “ancient” to fit into a modern (therefore, more resonant) context. With plenty of cheeky attitude.
Emilia Pérez marks Audiard’s twenty-fifth film as a screenwriter and his eleventh film as writer-director (a dual role he started to take on in 1994 with See How They Fall). And it’s clear that he’s never been more confident and secure in his abilities—not just because this is the first time he’s written a script without a co-writer credited, but because he took a chance on experimenting with the musical genre (which, as audiences saw this year, didn’t work out so well for a movie like Joker: Folie à Deux). Or, more precisely, an opera libretto. And yet, perhaps because of some of the more “absurd” elements of the story, a musical is the best way to diffuse the audience’s potential incredulity. After all, with this genre, pretty much anything goes—because everything feels inherently more fantastical within this type of world.
Cue Zoe Saldaña as Rita Mora Castro, an overlooked yet indispensable lawyer who defends the guilty-as-sin dregs of society with grudging skill, singing a song like “La Vaginoplastia.” A little ditty about all the different parts and procedures that go into switching genders. She engages in this back and forth with doctors in milieus that include Bangkok and Tel Aviv (this movie being made before choosing to get gender transformation surgery in Israel was an undeniable political affront). All on behalf of Juan “Manitas” Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón), the jefe of a Mexican drug cartel who briefly has her kidnapped to tell her that he can no longer live this life. Not because he’s trying to avoid arrest or even because he has some sort of moral compunction about the things he’s done, but because he needs to exist in the body he was always meant to. To live his life, as it is said, “authentically.” And obviously, he’s got the money required to make that change, forking a good chunk of it over to Rita to be his go-between as she eventually settles on the Israeli surgeon, Dr. Wasserman (Mark Ivanir), to realize Manitas’ dream. The catch? She must deal with his “highly emotional” (always a euphemism for “woman”) wife, Jessi Del Monte (Selena Gomez, sporting a terrible Spanish accent that’s slightly less noticeable when she’s singing).
It’s all part of the lead-up toward faking Manitas’ death so that Emilia Pérez can emerge. This is the identity that Manitas has been waiting to step into for years, having already started the process of taking hormones long ago. He is thus ready to “kill” Manitas, and Rita is the key to unlocking his previously unfulfilled wish—even though he knows that, in exchange, he must give up his family. Not just his wife, but their two children. The latter relinquishment being the most painful aspect of all. And yet, Manitas maintains, not as painful as continuing to exist as a man. Let alone such a brutal, often cruel one. It is in this sense that Emilia Pérez proffers the black-and-white notion that to become a woman is to stamp out the ruthlessness inherent in being a man. Not a radical idea, but likely one that still causes offense amongst both genders. Not to mention certain critics of the film—case in point, the Little White Lies assessment: “Any time Emilia ‘reverts’ to her ‘old ways,’ Gascón lowers her vocal register as if to equate masculinity with evil and femininity with good.” Well, if the vocal register fits…
Not to say, of course, that women can’t be just as malicious and terrible (in their own unique ways) as men. But the likelihood is, let’s say, much slimmer. And so, after Manitas becomes Emilia, there is a certain veracity to the mantra “change your gender, change your life.” And maybe even your entire personality. For, all of the sudden, Emilia becomes a beneficent philanthropist/activist. A person committed to helping undo some of the harm she caused while acting as the leader of a violent cartel by tirelessly working to find the location of missing persons (usually just their bodies) kidnapped by the cartels. This is where yet another “leading woman” enters the frame: Epifanía (Adriana Paz). And yes, her name is a bit on the nose, with Emilia seeming to have the “epiphany” that she’s fallen in love for the first time as her authentic self. The same seems to go for Epifanía. And so, it can be said that Emilia’s bodily transition has had a ripple effect/significant impact on the more metaphorical/emotional transitions of the three primary women in her life.
By this point in the movie (when Epifanía enters the mix), it’s also abundantly clear that Audiard has taken more than a dash of inspo out of the Pedro Almodóvar playbook (for example, The Skin I Live In) via-à-vis convoluted melodrama. But Almodóvar’s more personal connection to the queer and transgender community is what Audiard lacks in terms of carrying off the “authenticity” that he wants to…or rather, that certain viewers want him to. But that doesn’t negate the emotional response that Emilia Pérez can evoke. As it did for Madonna (who has worked with the movie’s choreographer, Damien Jalet, on her own projects, including select songs from The Celebration Tour). Indeed, her reaction left such a mark on Gascón that she told The Guardian, “Madonna was crying so much after the screening in New York. She told me: ‘You’re amazing!’ She was crying and crying. I said: ‘Madonna, please. It’s only a film. Be happy!’” The same thing one of the actors in Romeo + Juliet might have said to an audience member who reacted particularly viscerally to the well-known ending of Shakespeare’s tragedy.
And, like Romeo + Juliet, Emilia Pérez isn’t exactly being praised by everyone (side note: who could forget The New York Times’ shade-drenched review title of R + J that read, “Soft! What Light? It’s Flash, Romeo” or Roger Ebert giving it one of his worst reviews of a movie ever). Least of all the trans community. In fact, despite Gascón being transgender, not everyone sees the movie as a positive representation. Just another cartoonish one that wields tired tropes. A PinkNews review summed up the movie as “having no nuance when it comes to trans identity.” But maybe it does show some nuance in terms of how, no matter what gender you are, it’s still possible to be neither wholly “good” or “bad,” but filled with numerous contradictions as varied as life itself. As Gascón put it, “You can be LGBTQ+. You can be a man, a woman, an astronaut, an electrician. But if you are stupid, you are stupid.”
And those that want to ignore the many layers of Emilia Pérez based on criticisms rooted in literalness, not understanding/appreciating the nature of opera and musical theatricality or simply insisting that the transgender element is “offensive” (though surely not more offensive than Gomez and her “Spanish”) are missing the film’s brilliance. Not least of which is the undercutting theme of how living in a patriarchal society begets violence among all genders, all colors.
Gascón distilled it down to this: “There has always been an explicit violence toward others in parts of male heterosexuality, and that has also been taken up by a part of women’s feminism to crush a certain section of the population.” Whether that crushing will be allowed to further thrive in the aftermath of the U.S. election in November remains to be seen. But one certainty is this: changing gender is not necessarily the key to changing one’s mentality. That would take decades of deprogramming for many people. Especially women who have been conditioned to be misogynists themselves.
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