Emilia Perez: A Review (Review #1915)

 

EMILIA PEREZ

I wonder if those involved with Emilia Perez genuinely believe that it is not just a great film but an important, even necessary one. As I watched Emilia Perez, I genuinely wondered if it was some kind of parody, like a Saturday Night Live short film that someone decided to expand to a two-hour-plus musical film.

Frustrated Mexican female lawyer Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldana) finds her desires to move upwards nearly impossible due to her being a black Latina woman. That is, until she agrees to meet a mystery figure so hidden that she has to be basically kidnapped to meet him. That person is feared drug lord Manitas Del Monte (Karla Sofia Gascon). 

At this point, I would like to stop to say that "Manitas" translates as "Little Hands". Most Mexican drug lords go for or are given tough sounding names like "El Jefe de Jefes" (The Boss of Bosses), "King Kong", "El Ingeniero" (The Engineer) or "La Muerte" (Death). With the possible exception of Edgar Valdez Villareal, whose blonde hair and blue eyes earned him the nickname "La Barbie", a drug lord named "Manitas" seems the least threatening nom de guerre in drug cartel history. To be fair, La Barbie was ruthless, and I would argue that it should be El Barbie, but I digress.

Manitas needs Castro for a very specific assignment for which she will be well compensated if she is successful. She must find a specific surgeon outside of Mexico or the United States for a very special operation. Manitas Del Monte, fearsome and feared drug lord, wants to become a woman. It takes a lot of flying around the world, but Castro finally finds an Israeli doctor willing to give Manitas the surgery. To complete his transition, Manitas fakes his death after sending his wife Jesi (Selena Gomez) and their children to exile in Switzerland, Jesi unaware of the deception.

Four years later, a seemingly chance encounter between now-successful lawyer Rita and a tall woman named Emilia Perez reveals that Emilia is the former Manitas. Rita initially fears for her life, afraid that the former Manitas is killing anyone who knows her secret. Instead, Emilia reveals that she is happy after finding the woman within save for one thing. She wants to be around her children and tasks Rita to make it happen. Talking a very reluctant Jesi into returning to Mexico, Jesi is told that Emilia Perez is a distant cousin to Manitas who wants to help her raise his children. Jesi takes this as an opportunity to reunite with Gustavo (Edgar Ramirez), a former lover.

At first things seem well if a bit off with Jesi and Emilia until Emilia runs into a mother searching for her son, one of Mexico's many drug war victims. Feeling guilty about Manitas' past, Emilia creates La Lucecita (The Little Light), an organization that helps find victim's bodies. She also starts a romance with Epifania (Adriana Paz), another victim's mother. Emilia, however, is incensed when Jesi decides to move with Gustavo and take her kids with her. This triggers a series of events that lead to tragedy and death for so many. Will Emilia reveal her past identity to Jesi? Will the drug wars claim other victims?

I look at the great praise Emilia Perez has received among my brethren and am left genuinely puzzled by it all. It is a musical about a drug lord who has a sex-change operation and the various women in said drug lord's life pre-and-post surgery. If it had been played as a straight drama, it already would be stretching believability. The fact that it is a musical, where the various characters break out into song, pretty much shifts it into farce. Even if one could roll with such a whacked-out premise and even wackier presentation, something about having Emilia sing a song to Jesi during the final shootout would, I imagine, elicit one of two reactions: howls of laughter or eyerolls. 

I like musicals, but Emilia Perez is a musical that fails in both execution and presentation. I know that sometimes musical numbers look forced and thoroughly unnatural to the surroundings. Here however, the presentations are exaggerated even for a musical. Sometimes the musical numbers seem so wildly out-of-place. Bienvenida, where Gomez's character muses on coming back to Mexico, is hilarious as she thrashes about in her bed and then slips into some odd Flashdance like dance with other dancers. El Mal, which is currently shortlisted for Best Original Song is not only a bad song on its own but is dreadfully sung when Gascon inserts Perez into things. I would argue that El Mal is more a rap than a straightforward song, more focused on its oddball presentation than in anything else.

Mi Camino, the other Emilia Perez song shortlisted for Best Original Song, is probably the only decent song in the film. Even here though, the shift from a karaoke-like performance to bigger one kind of drowns the good aspects of the song.

A viral clip of the song La Vaginoplastia is bad for two reasons. One is that the song itself is bad, more talked than sung, and with terrible lyrics. "Man to woman or woman to man? Man to woman. From penis to vagina" are bad. They are also poorly delivered. Second, the entire sequence is irrelevant given that the surgeon does not even take the job, so that adds to the running time.

As a side note, the song Papa has the lyric "hueles como papa" (you smell like Dad). If you drop the accent from the second "A", it then becomes "you smell like a potato".  

Director Jacques Audiard's screenplay is muddled on certain aspects. It is never established whether Josi is Mexican or Mexican American. She mentions something about potentially moving with her sister in the States and on occasion slips into English. However, it never makes clear whether she is an American who married to a Mexican or is a Mexican with relatives in America. 

There have been many who have bashed Selena Gomez for her Spanish. I will not. I know that Spanish is Gomez's second language, and I suspect her parents did not grow up speaking Spanish either. As such, she is three generations removed from a Spanish background. Her lack of a Spanish-speaking background is audible, but again that is not her fault, and I give her credit for making an effort. However, the fact that it is clear that at times she struggles makes the issue of whether Josi is a Mexican or Mexican American more muddled. 

I don't have much to say about Gascon as the title character. Emilia Perez's transformation into a repentant person is one that I did not believe. I think the film actually is less about Emilia Perez and more about Saldana's Rita as she appears to be the dominant figure. Saldana did well, not great, but well. 

Emilia Perez is a film that one looks at and thinks, "are they serious?". A musical about a transgender drug lord? I imagine that if the other drug lords found out about Manitas' desire to find the woman within, those who would not be laughing their heads off would be cutting Manitas' head off. I struggle believing any of this, particularly how Manitas' men would follow such a person. Yet I digress. 

Many of the song presentations look more as if they were made for the stage than for a film, let alone something that would appear acceptable as real in a musical film. The stylized nature of the various musical numbers ironically works against Emilia Perez. The film is too long for the story it is telling. Perhaps if Manitas/Emilia were an underling to a drug lord or a poor person, without musical numbers, we could have had a genuinely moving drama. What we ended up with Emilia Perez was something that veers if not crosses into parody that I find wildly overpraised. 

Emilia Perez no es una santa. Es una payasa. 

DECISION: F