The Reel Review
A Mexico City corporate attorney frustrated with helping wealthy men literally get away with murder gets the opportunity of a lifetime when she is hired by the head of a notorious drug cartel. Her task – help fake the drug lord’s death and facilitate his transition to start a new life as a woman. Zoe Saldana, Karla Sofia Gascón and Selena Gomez star in this musical/crime thriller.
French director Jacques Audiard (Rust and Bone, A Prophet) certainly swings for the fences in this curiously strange but creatively interesting mashup of crime thriller and musical which focuses on the individual pursuit of happiness by four women. Unfortunately, his glitzy and messy execution falls short, despite a tight narrative and committed performances from Saldana and Gascon (Nosotros los Nobles). Gomez, speaking some terrible Spanish, is laughably unconvincing as the drug lord’s wife.
The crime thriller storyline is actually pretty interesting and would have made a fine story on its own. But the incorporation of song and dance throughout, while well-intended to give some exposition to the characters, is both corny and often so clumsily jarring as to distract from Emilia Perez‘s message, about the impossibility of ridding oneself completely of his or her past.
REEL FACTS
• Emilia Perez is France’s submission for the 2025 Best International Film Oscar.
• The four lead actresses – Zoe Saldana, Karla Sofia Gascon, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz – shared the Best Actress prize at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, which was the first win by a transgender person – Gascon.
• Director Jacques Audiard says he got the idea for the musical thriller after reading a chapter in a novel about a drug trafficker who wanted to change his identity.
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