Weak, Distasteful and Badly Written

(021325) Emilia Perez is a divisive, derivative, and cartoonish film with a few good scenes that somehow secured a nearly record breaking thirteen nominations at this year’s Oscars including Best Actress and most astonishing of all, Best Picture. This film could make history, possibly becoming the first Netflix film to win Best Picture. Additionally this could also be the first time a tran’s woman could win Best Actress. Unfortunately, this does not mean the film is actually all that good.

The film was directed and written by Jacques Audiard, who also made Heart and Bone (2012) featuring an excellent lead performance by Marion Cotillard, as well as The Prophet (2000), and Read My Lips (2001). So far this is his weakest effort.

Karia Sofia Gascon who is merely competent here got an Oscar nomination for Best Actress and she might even have the momentum to win. But at least a dozen better female performances were given last year that were not nominated including Nicole Kidman (Baby Girl), Saoirse Ronan (The Outrun), Anya Taylor-Joy (Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga), Zenyatta (Challengers), and Jodie Comer (The Bike Riders).

Emilia Perez has a botched script, and it was poorly thought out from its very conception. The film is a musical about a criminal that gets a gender-affirming procedure to escape a drug cartel that he was a part of. It takes its basic premise from the classic Marilyn Monroe vehicle, Some Like it Hot, in which two men impersonate women in order to escape the mafia. But the film-makers changed the premise a bit at the insistence of the lead. We are told Manitas, the man who becomes a woman always felt uncomfortable in his own skin and wanted to be female. But this all seems like an afterthought to give the film a social significance and score points with modern viewers. Then when Manitas interacts with her children later as Emilia, now a mother figure, it resembles an unfunny Mrs. Doubtfire with the gender switched protagonist watching his kids. It takes forever for the mom and kids to recognize him which seems very unlikely.

The plot of Emilia Perez even sounds ridiculous on paper and makes several whopping errors in judgment which make it hard to believe. It is a musical that wants us to sympathize with Manitas/Emilia, a hard-core criminal who was a high-ranking member of a drug cartel, responsible for dozens of deaths. And she does extraordinarily little to atone for her sins. We are supposed to think becoming a woman makes her “reborn”, earning her a clean slate to forget all his crimes and root for her.

Emilia Perez features Zoe Saldana (the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy) as Rita, a young, bright lawyer who wins spirit destroying cases while her male coworker gets all the credit. At first, she is the main character, but her story later fades into the background. But she does get one fine musical number (the best in the film) which makes her Oscar nomination partially deserved.

Rita is hired by the crime boss, Manitas (Karla Sofia Gascon). He needs her help getting gender reassignment surgery to escape gangsters, but still wants to maintain contact with his children while staying out of the public eye. He also wants to stay on good terms with her wife Jesse (played by Selena Gomez with an unconvincing accent). After he gets the surgery, she rechristens herself: Maria Perez. On some level, she now seems convinced she is a new person. She then becomes her own children’s babysitter.

As part of her new life, Emilia also helps locate bodies of people that were killed by either the evil cartel or her previous identity Manitas. This makes her a local hero, but this does not make up for what she did before, and she is never transformed into a good or likeable person. Also, when Jesse tries to move on with her life with another man, Emilia takes ruthless revenge and punishes her by freezing all her assets even though Emilia has her own romantic partner.

Also, the film always feels off and unbelievable from a cultural standpoint. Although it takes place in Mexico hardly any of the characters have believable Mexican accents. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that its director is French and speaks no Spanish and much of the film was shot in France. For this reason, the film was nominated as Best International film representing France.

This film is a nightmare of representation and just because it has a starring role for a trans woman does not mean that we should overlook that the film is doing a huge disservice to Mexicans and misrepresenting them. The casting director even angered Hispanics when he said he did not cast many Latinos because there was a lack of local talent in Mexico. Even GLADD took issue with the film arguing that it takes the significant issue of changing genders and makes it into camp or presents it like changing clothes. The film, I Saw the TV Glo deals with gender identity issues much more e sensitively, effectively and intelligently.

All this could be forgivable if the songs were memorable, but what passes for songs is the characters saying their lines to music. Many of the “songs” have ridiculous, atrocious lyrics and they are often in bad taste. One of the songs is merely a list of things that have to be cut off or changed in surgery and another is just a list pf surgeries that have to be done ending in “-asty” (like Rhinoplasty) that are requires in a sex change, It’s a long way from Gershwin or Kurt Weill to this.

Beyond its novelty value and weirdness, the film does not have many merits. All of the Oscar Best Picture nominees I have seen are superior to this film as well as dozens of films that got over looked. Emilia Perez does not succeed as a crime film, and it also fails as a musical and finally it falls flat in terms of its representation and identity politics. The best I can say about Emilia Perez is that its unconventionality kept my interest some of the time. But that is not enough to recommend it.