E for Effort

Emilia Pérez can't reach the Sirkian standard but it hits some high notes

[Three weeks till the Academy Awards! And since I’m an Oscar nerd you’ll be getting my reviews of all the Best Picture nominees, and some of the other major ones, before the March 2 show. Reviews of A Complete Unknown, The Brutalist, Conclave, and Nickel Boys are already up.]

I can see why a lot of people hate Emilia Pérez. It has been attacked from every angle — as trans representation, as a portrait of Mexican gang violence, but mostly as a movie. (About the “scandals” surrounding it, me importa un bledo — I’m a critic, not Army goddamn Archerd.) Maybe that deluge of rotten fruit and dead cats makes me want to be generous to it. Which doesn’t mean I think it’s good. Let’s just say I admire its nerve.

The story seems at first to be about Rita Castro, a junior lawyer in Mexico City who complains, in song and dance, that she has to do legal scut work for lousy attorneys representing scumbags. It’s an intriguing opening — Castro, sour and soul-tired, becomes incandescent when she sings about her anger at “justice for sale… corrupted verdicts sold by tabloids,” backed by a chorus of D.F. street hawkers and hangers-out.

Then Castro gets a mysterious call offering to make her rich for her legal services. After some musical contemplation, she decides she may as well, and upon consenting is kidnapped and spirited off to the lair of narco crime boss Juan “Manitas” Del Monte. Manitas is clearly a heavy dude and his pitch is stark and intimidating until it gets to the payoff: He wants to gender reassignment surgery — or rather, he wants “to be a woman.” Castro is to arrange this under every conceivable radar — including, she learns after she agrees, Manitas’ wife Jessi and their kids.

There is thus far enough energy behind the absurdity — not to mention very restless camerawork that jitters when it doesn’t swoon — that even a rational viewer may decide, so what if it doesn’t make sense (for one thing, surely a drug lord knows other, better-connected lawyers who could do such a job), let’s see how this thing plays out!

Alas, this is where the sledding gets heavy. Castro jets around the world looking for the right doc, resulting in the risible “penis to vagina” post-op ward song number you may have heard about, and many shots of world capitals that look like scenes from cruise line commercials. Castro finally settles on the Israeli Dr. Wasserman, who has a “so, nu, I’m hyperrational” affect (and a palpable Israeli dialect to remind us this is an international production). Castro has to do some heavy singing/acting to get him to even consider. The Doc interviews Manitas to make sure he’s a suitable candidate; Manitas says things like “I constantly thought about killing myself, but it’s not fair to leave without living my real life,” and that’s good enough for Dr. Rational.

This is where I started to turn on the movie, not so much because Wasserman was convinced by Manitas’ Oprah Winfrey confessions, but more because he took notes on the whole interview (like Manitas would allow that) and then handed the notes to Castro — and we later see them being burned. You fools! I thought. You had Chekov’s gun, and you elbowed it off the mantelpiece and it went off on the floor! But Manitas’ enemies finding out he’s a would-be she (shades of Norman Chancer greeting James Garner with “Hello, faggot!” in Blake Edwards’ Victor/Victoria) is not the sort of drama that interests director Jacques Audiard. Instead, he wants something more operatic.

We see Jessi grieving over Manitas’ faked death, and the beginning of Manitas’ transformation; then a “four years later” card and society party scene with a genuinely dramatic reveal as the newly-made Emilia Pérez turns up at a society party attended by the now-rich Castro. Pérez is a glamorous woman of means with multiple business interests, but she wants to see the old wife and, especially, the kids, and she wants Castro to help her do it. Castro is not keen, but Pérez is plaintive — in a very womanly way, but with a hint of Manitas’ steel — and we can see, in a close-up on Pérez’s hand squeezing Castro’s, that she will convince her.

Not only does Castro agree to persuade Jessi to move herself and the kids to a sunny villa owned by Manitas’ sister (Pérez), she agrees to help her establish a fund to uncover the disappearances of people killed in nacro wars — effectively an act of contrition for the violence she created as Manitas. Jessi, annoyed with the creepy over-attentiveness of her alleged sister-in-law, takes up with a boyfriend; Pérez takes up with a woman whose desaparecido husband had been abusive — a twofer, as it not only gives Pérez the feminine affection she craves, but also seems to release her from some of the guilt that animated her crusade. We could have stopped there, satisfied for the protagonists if not dramatically, but Pérez’s jealousy, then Jessi’s, leads to a violent, quasi-tragic conclusion.

The plot turns are Sirkian, but Sirk got over because, under his famous style, he was very rigorous — the dramaturgy was lean, the stakes clear, and the resolutions honestly won. Emilia Pérez wobbles early when we transition from Castro as protagonist to Pérez as protagonist, which leaves Castro an enabler, a commentator, and, increasingly, a third wheel. Pérez’s drama is also undercut. We may be pleased, after wondering what will come of her quest for womanhood, to see it succeed, then concerned when the ghosts of her previous life haunt and taunt her. But so much attention is devoted to her missionary work that we lose the urgency of her story. It’s as if a third of The Marriage of Maria Braun were devoted to how Braun built her post-war business. (Fassbinder, a true acolyte of Sirk, knew it need hardly be mentioned.)

Also, one has to ask: Why is this a musical? I can hardly judge the songs, as they are in that middle-class European pop style that I simply can’t get with. But I can say that, like the mission sub-theme, they tend to vitiate the drama. Maybe I only think that’s less true of the songs in, say, Oklahoma or Sweeney Todd. Maybe it’s cultural prejudice, and maybe so are my other complaints. Nonetheless it didn’t get me humming.

Karla Sofía Gascón is convincing and magnetic as both of her selves, and confident enough in the cornier scenes — as when she’s quizzing Jessi about her lover — to let a little campiness into the proceedings (that I think Sirk would have appreciated). Though her character gets short shrift, blade-thin, hollow-eyed Zoe Saldana works it hard. I’m surprised that Selena Gomez hasn’t gotten more appreciation for her crime moll — sentimental but tough, with the guts to take down an enemy even if it means danger to herself.