Emilia Perez

Savvy Mexico City lawyer Rita Moro Castro (Zoe Saldaña, "Guardians of the Galaxy") is attached to her salary but fed up getting rich clients off for crimes they've committed, like murdering their wives, when she's contacted by cartel leader Manitas Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón) offering a life changing amount of money for an unknown task. Rita agrees and is surprised to learn she's to locate a discreet top notch sex change surgeon and engineer Del Monte's death so he may live out the rest of his days as "Emilia Pérez."

Laura's Review: A-

Cowriter (with Thomas Bidegain, Nicolas Livecchi)/director Jacques Audiard's ("A Prophet," "The Sisters Brothers") films feature protagonists trying to change their lives, but with "Emilia Pérez," he's given us his most startling example in his best film to date. And it's a musical! Trans actress Karla Sofía Gascón tackles two genders of the same character, exhibiting different degrees of empathy in each while Saldana and Selena Gomez as Del Monte's wife Jessi support her with showstopping musical numbers and huge character arcs. "Emilia Pérez" is a wildly imaginative film that proposes female leadership as a remedy to male violence.

As Rita laments getting a man off for murder ('he killed his wife and we call it suicide'), she dances through the streets of Mexico City occasionally stopping to sit at a laptop, standersby her backup dancers. She'll be trundled into a black SUV, a hood placed over her head, on her way to meet the hirsute and raspy Del Monte, Gascón singing a plaintive song about desire. Tasked with changing his identity, Rita jets off to cities around the world, a sprightly musical number outlining the phases of sexual transition, before hiring Dr. Wasserman (Mark Ivanir). Rita moves Del Monte's distraught wife Jessi and their two kids to a lakefront estate in Switzerland, telling her she may be there for some time, but that it is her husband's wish for their protection. Her job is now complete, or so she thinks.

Now living in London, Rita is engaged by a wealthy looking, middle-aged woman at a social gathering and they connect over their shared homeland of Mexico, but as the conversation continues, Rita senses something. 'Is it you?' she asks Emilia Pérez. And the second act of the film begins as Rita pairs up with Emilia, returning to Mexico to found a charity to locate the missing killed by cartels. But Emilia misses her kids and so has Jessi and the children flown back to Mexico where she poses as the kids' aunt. When Jessi begins to feel shunted aside and kept in a cage, she resumes the affair she was having with Gustavo Brun (Edgar Ramírez, TV's 'Carlos,' 2015's "Joy"). Emilia encourages it, having found love herself when Epifanía (Adriana Paz), one of her cartel murder spouses, confesses that she is glad her husband is gone and sparks fly.
But these two diverging paths will crash back into each other in a moment of confession and love with tragic consequences.

If there is a flaw in the film, it is in the darkness which encompasses the musical numbers, stark soundstages which belie a production otherwise rooted in colorful realism. This takes many of these otherwise engaging song and dance interludes out of the realm of the film instead of integrating them into it organically, something finally accomplished in the film's last scene. And while Gascón is the film's heart, it is Saldaña and Gomez who wield the musical chops, Saldaña impressing with expressive dancing, Gomez knocking it out of the park with 'El Camino,' both actresses never better.

"Emilia Pérez" is an invigorating original led by three women exhibiting ambition, compassion, motherhood, love and desire. Jacques Audiard's musical may have some flaws, but it aims for the heart and hits its target.

Netflix opens "Emilia Pérez" in select theaters on 11/1/24.  It begins streaming on 11/13/24.