Emilia Pérez is very similar to Drake’s “It’s All A Blur Tour”: overhyped, undeserving of positive recognition, and failing to deliver on the things that matter. Despite not even paying to watch this movie-musical, I still want a refund for the two hours and ten minutes I spent watching it.
The plot, according to Internet Movie Database (IMDb), is that “cartel leader Emilia enlists unappreciated lawyer Rita to help fake her death so that she can finally live authentically as her true self.”
But instead of following Emilia (Karla Sofía Gascón) into her gender transition and new life, the movie quickly unravels into a completely different film and loses sight of what it should and could have been. Sometimes we get a brief second to think about the topics at hand and the questions they prompt.
The plot is the first problem in Emilia Pérez. It seems to want to be an action film about a cartel boss who wants to change for the better. The subplot about her transition, which only seemed to be relevant in the beginning, quickly gets forgotten in favor of her cartel boss side. Her work as a cartel leader seems to be randomly thrown in as a way to make the movie more interesting – as though Emilia’s transition wouldn’t be interesting enough. The film needed a clearly defined plot that it followed all the way through.
A little way into the film, Emilia equips Rita (Zoe Saldaña) to help look for a doctor and a place to perform her transition surgery, and the meeting gives us two monologues. The first talks about how she has wanted to transition since childhood, while the latter focuses more on her family and the life she would be leaving behind. Sadly, neither of these monologues seems to go anywhere or do anything for the plot. Both seem just thrown in and are forgotten quickly. The film continuously misses the opportunity to talk about how conformity and anti-queer societal norms play out in Emila’s community/culture, despite how crucial that would be for understanding Emilia as a character.
Emilia changes her sex and – somehow – automatically wants to be a better person. It’s incredibly strange to try to tie someone transitioning to them becoming a better person. In Emilia’s world, some families never got to see their son come home because he was killed or caught in the crossfire of a conflict. Emilia no doubt has given the order to commit or has committed many atrocities herself. They use her transition as the part of the story where the villain sees the errors of their ways. Her sudden redemption via helping families find their missing members and advocating for the local police force to have more resources without suffering the consequences for her actions takes away from any political commentary the film was trying to make. A sex change and new identity doesn’t wash the blood from her hands.
The setting of this movie could have made it an impactful story about growing up with stigma against the LGBTQ+, but it strays away from these themes. This setting leaves out a chance to make a strong connection with the audience. Like talking about her family. Except for most of the film, they either aren’t present or are in conflict with Emilia. The only time we get anything about how her family has been affected by her life/choices, it’s in relation to her cartel business. Even her own wife (ex-wife?) gets forgotten until towards the end of the movie.
The film commits another cinematic sin with the utterly useless addition of musical pieces. If a movie is a musical, then the music should add to the story or the characters, but more often than not, the music hurts the story and completely takes you out of the zone you were in. In one song, Rita is having a conversation with a doctor about performing a sex change surgery, something the doctor specializes in. Then he says Emilia shouldn’t have the surgery? This song did nothing for the story and seems like the director’s way of telling us, “Hey, I’m progressive!”
When the songs aren’t weird and unnecessary, they are repetitive. At one point or another, they all repeat the same lyrics over again, which seem to be more out of laziness, as the songs simply have no substance to them. This isn’t to say all the songs were terrible. The ethereal songs played in the background of scenes were lovely. The songs post-transition and the song about Epinfina did add to Emilia’s character, giving her some depth and helping us connect with her. The thing is, this is a musical. It should be this way for all of the songs, not just some of them, such as El Mal, the song that brought home one of film’s Oscars, which did not.
While El Mal was a nice song to listen to, if you pay attention to the lyrics, you would find that they go nowhere. The meaning of the song is to show Rita’s discontent with the actions of Emilia, inviting crooks and corrupt officials to an event supposed to raise money for an organization for people affected by their actions. But has no story consequences and does not lead anywhere.
The only Oscar win Emilia Pérez deserved was Zoe Saldaña’s performance for how lively she made the otherwise bland film. All in all, no. Emilia Perez did not deserve its Oscar nominations, nor did it deserve to win.
