Director: Jacques Audiard
Cast: Zoe Saldana, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, Mark Ivanir, Edgar Ramírez
Screenplay: Jacques Audiard
132 mins. Rated R for language, some violent content and sexual material.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film like Emilia Pérez, with this exact combination of styles and influences all smashed together. Beginning with a fairly simple premise, the movie expands gradually into a number of interesting avenues and consistently overwhelmed my expectations, all the while remaining a wholly entertaining and emotional ride.

Rita (Zoe Saldana, Avengers: Endgame) is a lawyer who is regularly over-worked and under-appreciated. She’s hired by a cartel kingpin to facilitate their gender affirming surgery, transition, and disappearance from the world. From there, Rita has to maneuver a number of moving parts in order to complete the job, but four years later, she reconnects with the former kingpin, Emilia Pérez (Karla Sofía Gascón, We Are the Nobles), who has further requests for Rita.

It’s hard to pin down the central figure of the film. We begin with Rita, then get to know Emilia, and eventually Emilia’s “widow” Jessi (Selena Gomez, The Big Short). The film shifts between these characters and their wildly different stories with excellent precision, and writer/director Jacques Audiard (The Sisters Brothers) handles the occasionally heavy subject matter with a perfect understand of his intended tone. Emilia Pérez runs the gamut of emotions, tones, and musical numbers, always comfortably shifting back and forth. This trifecta of talents (Saldana, Gascón, and Gomez) are committed to Audiard’s wildly original vision and carry the narrative heft well. It’s nice to see Saldana outside of the blockbusters, getting a chance to show her wide range of skills, and Gascón and Gomez both gave a showcase of their individual prowess.

Emilia Pérez’s musical numbers sometimes begin recitative, but they frequently explode outwards, and Audiard’s camera even gets in on the fun with some wonderful cinematographic choreography. Between the performers and the visuals, the music of Emilia Pérez feels like something new, something BOLD, something remixed in a way we haven’t quite seen before (that surgery song early in the film lives rent-free in my head). At times, the musical felt derived from Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, while other times, Rita acted like a narrator or guide to the music a la Edward James Olmos in Valdez’s Zoot Suit.

This is a very physical movie, most of it feeling like the characters’ body movements are more integral to the plot than the dialogue. While the language and the music serve the emotionality of the narrative, it is the physicality of the characters that drives a more aggressive attitude of the film. Each character is looking for their path forward, and their bodies tell the story as much as their words.

Emilia Pérez is Big, Bold, Aggressive, a little angry at times, but frequently filled with tenderness. It has great performances and a singular vision from Jacques Audiard. It’s a movie that perhaps requires a second viewing to appreciate all the technical prowess on display, but I was lost enough in the beautiful work from Saldana, Gascón, and Gomez and the core tragedy unfolding. Seek this one out as soon as possible.

4/5
-Kyle A. Goethe