Emilia Pérez
Netflix photo and trailer link via IMDB.com
Spoiler alert:
“Emilia Pérez,” leading the field of Golden Globe nominees announced Monday, is the story of a silver-toothed leader of a ruthless Mexican drug cartel who has a sex-change operation and becomes a saint.
It's a musical.
I don't normally – as in never – give away surprises in thrillers. Much less, musical thrillers. But since this one also falls under the genres of comedy and crime on the Internet Movie Data Base, all bets are off. I'm not sure I get the comedy part, but that doesn't distract from the fascination of watching its colorful, uniquely twisted and surprisingly touching plot unfold.
Folks in the background speak a variety of subtitled languages, and are liable to break into song and dance at key dramatic moments. It's unique and weird … and a lot of fun.
Audaciously directed and co-written by Jacques Audiard, it stars Spanish actress Karla Sofia Gascón. Karla began her life as Juan Carlos Gascón before undergoing gender transition. Similarly, she begins the movie as Manitas Del Monte before becoming Emilia.
Gascón's role becomes more charismatic and inspiring as the movie takes one unexpected turn after another, but most of the fireworks on screen are generated by her co-stars. Selena Gomez plays Jessi, Manitas' sensual wife and mother of his two children. But it's Zoe Saldana who steals the show.
She plays Rita Moro Castro, a thankless attorney enlisted by Manitas to become partner in his, uh, evolution. Rita is the brains and the conscience of the operation, helping Emilia reenter Mexican society as a benefactor secretly trying to atone for her former self's many sins.
Trying to recount the storyline feels clunky compared with the bold, graceful assurance of Audiard's filmmaking. Girding the globe with stops in foreign capitals, some of the images are breathtaking, testing the screen's limits to hold them.
And then everyone starts to sing and dance. It's a Mexican answer to a Bollywood extravaganza or “La La Land.” It's the love child of "Evita" and Emily Blunt's DEA-vs.-cartel thriller "Sicario." The music is modern, the choreography riveting. Numbers featuring Saldana and Gomez smolder, threatening to ignite the screen at any moment.
It's less musical comedy than pop opera, the songs ranging from anthems sung by hundreds of marchers through the streets of Mexico City to a lullaby sung in a child's bedroom.
Early in the story when Rita is interviewing an Israeli surgeon (Mark Ivanar) about doing the operation, he tells her in effect, once a wolf, always a wolf.
Changing gender doesn't change the soul inside. Drug lord Manitas may have found a path to the tenderness denied him in his violent youth, but Emilia is destined to discover that love is elusive, fragile and precarious under the best of circumstances.
During movie awards season, issues often trump entertainment value and box office figures that rule the film industry the other eleven months of the year.
“Emilia Pérez's” issue – that its star is trans – along with all its glorious filmmaking, may propel it to Golden Globe and other cinema prizes. It's a symbolic way film artists can protest hypocrisy and authoritarianism taking root around the planet.
In many ways the film stands for everything Donald Trump railed against in his last campaign: trans people … Mexicans … love … tolerance …
The election was America's – as opposed to Golden Globe voters' – verdict.
It's worth noting that the Golden Globes are awarded by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Scandal-ridden and still barely reputable, the group comprises around 105 members representing more than 50 countries, who hold a disproportionate amount of power at awards time. Golden Globes often prefigure the Academy Awards a few months later.
More significant is the second word in the group's name: Foreign.
Besides best picture, “Emilia Pérez” is up for a Non-English Language Golden Globe, even though the characters frequently lapse into English. It embodies what used to be called a foreign film.
In our land, we have something called “culture wars,” where the loudest bullying blockhead wins.
Elsewhere, where America isn't First but is one of many, “culture” means something else entirely. It is our hopes, our soul, our beauty, our most heartfelt expressions of what we cherish. Not “we” alone, but everyone together.
That elsewhere is where “Emilia Pérez” lives, and the rest of us might want to apply for citizenship.
The last few lines you wrote are heart felt my friend, and beautifully expressed.
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