SELENA GOMEZ IN EMILIA PÉREZ

JACQUES AUDIARD: EMILIA PÉREZ (2024)

A trans musical in Spanish from Audard, and a big hit at Cannes - now seen at the NYFF

From Hollywood Reporter:

A number of unfavorable or reserved reviews shows some are not so crazy about such an oddball creation, indicated by the Metacritic rating of 71%. (later 69% - now 72%). But the novelty, plus Selena Gomez and Édgar Ramirez make this a unique, and for some desirable bauble. The film won the Cannes Jury Prize, and the Best Actress award went jointly to the four leading ladies, Adriana Paz, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, and Zoe Saldaña.

David Rooney in Hollywood Reporter sums up: "Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and the divine Karla Sofia Gascón light up Jacques Audiard’s fabulous queer crime musical in which a Mexican drug lord enlists the help of a lawyer to undergo gender-affirming surgery in the latest from the French director of The Beat My Heart Skipped, A Prophet, Rust and Bone, and Dheepan."

Those four movies are quite a run, and for a few years Audiard was my favorite French director. If that changed, it's because he's so open to change himself, genre change - which, in French, could mean sex change, so the theme of this nutty, raucous, semi-comic, half-sung, Spanish language film is a logical step. I didn't find myself keeping up, even though I could appreciate the audacity and confidence of this production.

See Peter Bradshaw's Cannes vlog where he tosses off a fluent summary of this semi-musical S.A. gangster-family film (he says it's "One of the wackiest films in Cannes," and is "Like a thriller by Amat Escalante, with lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, as if Pedro Almodóvar had made a musical of Mrs. Doubtfire." And then he wonders if its periodic bursts into song aren't maybe designed to mask how far-fetched it all is.

I wasn't at Cannes, and didn't get to see Emilia Perez till now, the end of September, as part of the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center, but I remembered Bradshaw's question as I watched. Isn't this all very implausible? Isn't it just a fable, a myth? About what? Isn't it a bit like a surreal Exquisite Corpse, where different people add continuations to a drawing without knowing what came before?

It feels as if Audiard just likes the idea, as well all might, of a super-macho Mexican gangster who wants nothing more than to become a woman; who always felt that way. The delight of the production obviously is not only the trans person (played by an actual one), the gangster transformed into zoftig woman who now wants to do good - as if anybody could undo all the evil, the brutality, the disappeared people of Mexico - but the triumph of these four women leading in dramatically different roles in this ebullient musical, with its moments of love and violent conflict - this is what appealed to people, as signified by the joint Best Actress award at Cannes being given to all four of them. I don't know how much that matters to the home consumer on his/her/their Netflix screen.

But though I was floored by the film, and will have to watch it at least once more to take it all in, there seemed some obvious things lacking. Maybe there was enough about the ardors of body transformation at Cannes already this year with Demi Moore in Coralie Fargeat's Substance. But there isn't much in Emilia Perez about how gangster Manitas Del Monte suffers to be transformed (though at one point she says she did). Indeed the machinations of the plot overwhelm any treatment of inner turmoil or gratification in the film. I refer you to Bradshaw's formal written summary of the plot of Emilia Perez, his Guardian review of it, for the many details. The plot action is fast and exciting, and that speed and excitement take the place of emotional or intellectual gratification. Others may differ on this.

Emilia Perez may provide high octane (or "wacky,"to use Bradshaw's word) entertainment. It's amazing how far in another direction Audiard has gone this time, again. It still feels ever more that he peaked with The Beat My Heart Skipped followed by A Prophet. But he wants to keep changing genres, and this is the genre-changingest of all.

This got a nine-minute standing ovation at Cannes: (none of that at the NYFF press screening. Bunbury saw it as "very much a winner," hinting at Palme d'Or possibilities. (Debruge said in this Variety review that trans star Karla Sofía Gascón "electrifies" in her lead role.) Indeed everything is bright and sparkling, but perhaps a little crass, perhaps a little lacking in individuality, or delicacy. - pushed. For the Cannes red carpet, Gomez wore a beautifully simple YSL gown and a $3.5 million Bulgari diamond necklace. That was the most tastefully crass gesture of all. Gomez may not project quite the sophistication to "rock" such classy "rocks." Netflix has bought Émilia Perez for $12 million.

Emilia Perez, 130, debuted at Cannes, winning the Jury Prize and combined Best Actress award. Also shown at Brussels, Wrocław, Telluride, San Sebastian, Toronto, Hamburg and the NYFF, where it was screened for this review. US theaatrical release Nov. 1, 2024; release on Netflx Nov. 13. Metacritic rating: 7̶1̶%̶ now 69% (10/9/24).

On rewatching later (November 18), this time at home and keeping up much better with the bizarre plot line, I find the details fascinating, surely material for a mini-series, but still full of plausibility holes and still not emotionally involving. Now that it's showing in US theaters - IFC Center in NYC, Opera Plaza in San Francisco, it's one of the movie events of 2024 and I'd recommend seeing it. After you've seen Anora, Conclave, and A Real Pain.


SERENA GOMEZ IN YSL AND BULGARI

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.